Reports: Notre Dame pushes for ACC to add Stanford, Cal
Who said Notre Dame is immune and/or oblivious to conference realignment conversations? Reportedly, the Fighting Irish are in the middle of a major one at the moment.
Atlantic Coast Conference presidents met Wednesday night about the possibility of adding Stanford and Cal, two of the four teams left in the Pac-12 once every other member officially jumps ship in 2024, to their league. Based on reports from numerous credible outlets including ESPN, The Athletic and Yahoo Sports, among others, the presidents couldn’t come to a consensus.
Per multiple reports from those same outlets, Notre Dame administrators really wish they would have.
Notre Dame’s push for the ACC to swallow up Stanford and Cal was first reported by Larry Williams of TigerIllustrated.com. The Action Network’s Brett McMurphy quoted a source on Notre Dame’s involvement in the ACC meetings in his subsequent report. McMurphy was all over the story quickly after Williams broke it.
“Notre Dame initiated us bringing on Stanford and Cal and continues to push, yet Notre Dame won’t join the ACC as a full-time member,” an ACC source told McMurphy. “That doesn’t make sense to us.”
Twelve of the ACC’s 15 schools need to vote yes in order for Stanford and Cal to gain admittance into the conference. Being that the Fighting Irish’s sports teams outside of football and hockey compete in the ACC, Notre Dame has a seat at the table and one of the votes. The Irish are pushing for ACC expansion in order to prevent the league from dissolving like the Pac-12, thus preserving a home for ND sports like baseball, basketball, lacrosse, soccer, etc.
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In addition to Cal and Stanford, SMU is believed by many to be one of the universities the ACC has been in serious talks with. Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported four to five ACC schools are against expansion, and if a vote was held Wednesday it would not have passed. ESPN’s Pete Thamel went as far as to say talks between the ACC and that trio of schools “hit significant roadblocks.”
The mere mutual interest between the three schools and the ACC, as little as it may now be, is in response to major upheaval in the college athletics landscape last week when Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joined the Big 12 and Washington and Oregon leapt to the Big Ten. Those are the moves that left Stanford, Cal, Washington State and Oregon State hanging.
The knock on Notre Dame in all of this is if the Irish are lobbying for Stanford and Cal to help stabilize the ACC, then why not do it themselves in football? One can reason that it’s because Notre Dame does not need big conference money from the ACC’s media rights deal for its football program to stay afloat. If the Irish strike a new mega media rights deal with NBC, which is expected, Notre Dame’s annual revenue will likely exceed that of ACC schools and be closer to par with programs in the Big Ten and SEC all while being independent.
Notre Dame’s hope for the ACC to stay alive is all about stability for all of its other sports. It wouldn’t hurt for there to be even more of a reason to play annual rival Stanford in football, though, either.
