Notre Dame AD says ACC did 'permanent damage' to relationship with push for Miami over Irish
Notre Dame didn't mind Miami making their case, but felt the ACC was 'taking a lot of shots at us'
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2 min read
When the final College Football Playoff rankings were announced, Notre Dame saw its postseason hopes dissolve.
Alabama remained at No. 9 after getting blasted in the SEC Championship. Despite both teams being idle, Miami jumped the Irish for the No. 10 spot after weeks of being ranked behind them. It was both shocking and somewhat predictable, as there was never going to be an acceptable outcome given the way the committee handled this situation all year. Notre Dame felt bamboozled by a number of parties, including the committee, the CFP's TV partner ESPN and the ACC.
As a result, Notre Dame declined all bowl bids, offering a bit of a parting shot at ESPN which broadcasts and operates most bowl games. Athletic director Pete Bevacqua has been making the rounds to voice the school's displeasure with the situation. He joined the Dan Patrick Show Monday where he addressed the ACC's role in the situation.
"We have no gripes about any of the schools in the ACC. But we were mystified by the actions of the conference to attack their biggest business partner in football and a member of their conference in 24 of our other sports," Bevacqua said. "And I wouldn't be honest with you if I didn't say that they've certainly done permanent damage between the conference and Notre Dame."
"Just we didn't appreciate the fact that we were singled out repeatedly and compared to Miami," Bevacqua explained when asked to elaborate. "Not by Miami — Miami has every right to do that — but it raised a lot of eyebrows here that the conference was taking shots at us."
The relationship between Notre Dame and the ACC certainly complicated matters here, but when push came to shove, there was never a world where the ACC wouldn't back one of their actual member programs in favor of a "business partner," as Bevacqua put it.
Notre Dame is an ACC member in most other sports. In football, they have a deal to play five games per season against ACC teams while retaining their beloved independency. They recently added a long-term scheduling agreement with Clemson to play each year from 2027-38 that raised some questions among other ACC programs about how that will impact the Irish's agreement, and it seems there is some serious tension building within their partnership.
As for what the ramifications are for the "permanent damage" Bevacqua claims has been done by the ACC stumping for the Canes, that's not abundantly clear. Perhaps the Irish will look to solidify more scheduling deals with the ACC's biggest programs, frustrating others who could lose home games with Notre Dame that would be huge revenue drivers.
The biggest problem Notre Dame should have with the ACC is that they could have avoided this debacle with a better tiebreaker policy to put the highest ranked teams in the ACC title game. Miami winning the ACC would have kept Notre Dame in the field as the final at-large team, but instead the Canes watched as their old friend Manny Diaz and Duke win an ACC title before them.
All of this will become a moot issue next year when Notre Dame's MOU with the Playoff kicks in and they're guaranteed a spot if they rank inside the top 12. That doesn't help the Irish this year, and in the meantime they're searching for anyone to blame other than themselves for losing their first two games against their two best opponents.
