Duke, NC State Publishers on Notre Dame Joining ACC for 2020
The ACC announced a 10 plus one schedule on Wednesday for the 2020 football season. The most surprising aspect of the scheduling model, however, may be the fact that Notre Dame will be playing a full 10-game ACC conference schedule and be eligible for the conference title.
Notre Dame has been an independent in football for its entire history and negotiated its own TV contract, with NBC, decades ago. While the Irish have become a member of the ACC for other sports, Notre Dame steadfastly held onto its independent status—and NBC money—in football.
The Irish play several games against ACC teams each year—there were six ACC games on the schedule for the 2020 season prior to the pandemic.
Blue Devil Country publisher Shawn Krest and All Wolfpack publisher Brett Friedlander appeared on a podcast with Rivals’ Tar Heel Illustrated publisher Andrew Jones to discuss the ACC announcement, and all three agreed that Notre Dame’s status as a conference member was the big surprise of the day.
Friedlander and Krest both pointed out that the Irish were willing to share the NBC money equally with the other ACC schools, which was a big factor toward getting the deal done. One reason for that might be the difficulty in putting together an independent schedule with so many power conferences going to conference-only schedules. As Krest pointed out, Notre Dame had already lost a quarter of its schedule with the cancellation of games against Pac-12 and Big Ten foes. Both conferences have already announced that they were going to only play conference games this year.
