After years bending to Notre Dame’s whims, the ACC finally got the better of it
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- ACC leveraged playoff reshuffle to deny Notre Dame a CFP spot, asserting control.
- Notre Dame’s partial ACC status and CFP guarantees failed to protect access.
- ACC maintained leverage over scheduling and revenue despite Notre Dame exits.
After watching Notre Dame use the ACC for its own purposes all these years without remorse — taking advantage of the league during COVID, pushing to add Stanford for its own selfish reasons, and so on — the Irish finally got their comeuppance.
The ACC sneaking a representative into the College Football Playoff through a back door at Notre Dame’s expense when the committee reshuffled things for no apparent objective reason is the funniest possible outcome to the league’s nightmare scenario that arose when Duke beat Virginia for the ACC title on Saturday night and raised the possibility of the ACC being left out entirely.
Naturally, when Notre Dame threw all of its toys out of its stroller Sunday and said it would rather not play in a bowl after all, thank you very much, that required the ACC to restart its bowl process and delayed the eventual announcements by several hours. When the Irish have a cold, the ACC still has to wipe its nose.
Still, the not-so-hidden implication that Notre Dame would have been in the 12-team field instead of Miami if it were a full ACC member (like it was during the COVID season) is nothing short of riotous. It’s even more amusing than ACC commissioner Jim Phillips’ defense of the league’s relationship with Notre Dame this fall, when he said “They’re all in, with the asterisk of football.”
Mighty big asterisk you’ve got there. Would be a real shame if anything happened to it.
For all of its attempts to cook the books, with its own seat at the table in the CFP and a full vote in ACC matters despite being “all in” to the tune of 20 percent, Notre Dame’s longstanding policy of having things both ways finally caught up with it, even if the Irish have every right to be aggrieved by the way things were handled.
The one thing that could ever potentially trump the sanctity of Notre Dame’s football independence was being denied championship access. And it happened Sunday.
To prevent that from happening during COVID, Notre Dame decided playing within the ACC wasn’t so bad after all when there were no other options. This time, it probably isn’t going to push Notre Dame any closer to full ACC membership, even in an era of “success initiatives” within the ACC when the Irish would not only be able to eat what they kill but potentially hold onto most of their NBC pot o’ gold.
According to Yahoo, Notre Dame had somehow secured a guarantee in CFP negotiations that it would make the field if it is ranked in the top 12 of a 12-team or 14-team bracket going forward, but that doesn’t take effect until next year. If that were the case this year, the Irish would have been in and Miami would have been out.
(Unless the committee decided to jump Miami over Alabama to make sure the ACC was represented. You just never know. After all, Florida State losing its quarterback was enough to eliminate an undefeated team that still won an ACC title without him, but Ole Miss losing its coach was not enough to eliminate an 11-1 team that didn’t even play in the SEC championship. It’s all Calvinball in there.)
So other than forcing the ACC to go through its whole bowl selection process a second time Sunday by unexpectedly withdrawing, Notre Dame’s omission from the CFP probably isn’t going to have the long-term impacts it might seem to portend. The Irish will continue to wield outsized power both within the ACC and the CFP as it dithers over expansion, the deadline for which has been pushed back to next month.
And there are unquestionably mutual benefits to the ACC’s relationship with Notre Dame despite the imbalance in power. Especially in an era when ratings drive revenue, getting Notre Dame on the schedule can be a big boost, unless you’re North Carolina trying to avoid racking up double-digit losses in Year 2 of the Belichick Era.
For once, though, after years of the ACC bending to Notre Dame’s whims, the ACC got the better of the Irish in football politics. It doesn’t happen often. It may never happen again. But it happened.
No asterisk required.
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This story was originally published December 8, 2025 at 11:18 AM with the headline "After years bending to Notre Dame’s whims, the ACC finally got the better of it."
