Is Notre Dame the reason the ACC is reportedly ditching football divisions?

The ACC has had one of its member institutions qualify for the College Football Playoff in seven of the eight years of the CFP’s existence. Only in one of those years, though, did the conference have two schools make it in the same season: 2020. The teams? Clemson and … Notre Dame.

Perusing the ACC standings over the years, you’ll notice something different about 2020. The conference ditched divisions. No Atlantic, no Coastal. Just a large grouping of 15 teams — one more than usual with the addition of Notre Dame for a one-off campaign courtesy of the irregularities brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notre Dame went 10-0 during the 2020 regular season with nine wins over ACC foes and a 52-0 victory over South Florida. In the only year the Fighting Irish have ever participated within a conference in the extensive, proud history of the program, they won a regular season conference title. They beat No. 1 Clemson, a perennial power over the last decade, in double overtime to do it.

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Clemson didn’t have starting quarterback and future No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick Trevor Lawrence for that game, though, and when he returned for the ACC Championship Game the Tigers exacted revenge — much to the delight of the conference itself. For the first time ever, the ACC put two teams in the CFP as a result of Clemson’s title game triumph. The CFP committee wasn’t going to leave a one-loss Notre Dame out of the dance; not after the Irish had already beaten the Tigers earlier in the year — even without Lawrence suiting up.

A year and a half later — after the ACC did not put a single team into the CFP for the first time ever — the conference is reportedly mulling over the idea of nixing football divisions as soon as 2023 per ESPN’s Pete Thamel. What does Notre Dame have to do with that? Say the ACC decided to throw the Irish in Clemson’s division in 2020. The Tigers wouldn’t have played in the conference championship game. It would have been 8-2 Miami instead. The result of that game would have opened an entirely different realm of CFP scenarios. As it turned out, the division-less structure aided the conference.

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There was a time when the ACC would have encouraged a rare meeting of the Irish and Hurricanes. Notre Dame and Miami hadn’t played yet that year. They’ve only played four times since 1991, in fact. The matchup would have been a national spectacle, for sure. But it could have been one that spelled bad news for the conference’s hopes of having two teams among the final four.

“Notre Dame and Clemson, not only did they play twice (in 2020), but they both made the College Football Playoff,” North Carolina-based radio host Joe Giglio said. “Weird. The thought process has obviously changed.”

Could Notre Dame and Clemson still have both qualified? Sure. It would have been the résumé of a 9-1 Tigers team versus that of 7-1 Texas A&M. But what if Notre Dame lost to the Hurricanes? The CFP couldn’t keep the Irish out when their one defeat was against conference-champion Clemson, but what if it had come against two-loss conference-champion Miami? The best way to never have to entertain that hypothetical is by having the two best teams play for the conference championship instead. In 2020, those teams were Notre Dame and Clemson. And they both made the CFP.

The circumstances still have to fall into place, obviously. Take last season for example. Wake Forest and Pitt were the two best teams in the ACC. They came from different divisions, but neither had the credentials to make a case for the CFP. Sometimes, that’s going to occur. A group of five team and two SEC teams getting in was going to leave three power five conference champions out altogether anyway. The ACC had one of those. That’s just the way it shook out in 2021.

There’s always going to be a chance of the underdog knocking the favorite out of CFP contention in a conference championship game as well. For instance, Oregon beating Utah in 2019. But there is also going to be a chance the two teams competing in a conference title game both make the CFP. Alabama and Georgia last season. Notre Dame and Clemson in 2020. That’s the way to go, and the administrators within the ACC seem to have caught on.