This year, at the ACC's spring meetings in Amelia Island, Florida, an otherwise routine meeting provided an opportunity for Notre Dame to address its immediate future with the league.

The ACC Network is in the process of launching, the league has renegotiated its media rights deal (extending its grant-of-rights), and it has recently announced an extension of its agreement with Notre Dame as a partial member for football.

According to reporters on the scene, including the Orlando Sentinel's Matt Murschel, athletic director Jack Swarbrick said rumors of "informal talks" between the ACC and Notre Dame about joining the league full-time are "absolutely not true."

"We love the ACC but we love our relationship the way it is and there hasn't been any discussion," Swarbrick added.

A full ACC member in other sports, Notre Dame will continue to play a handful of ACC opponents in football every season while maintaining its status as an independent with control over the rest of its schedule.

It's talking season. With spring practice in the books and still another two months until the next talking season starts up with media days, this stretch of the offseason is ripe for conference realignment chatter along the rumor mill.

Sometimes it's Big 12 expansion, other times it's projecting decades into the future to predict what the landscape would look like with superconferences. Die-hard fans play fantasy conferences, and almost every year a wild, unsourced report or general conjecture gets enough traction to be considered a rumor to be addressed.

Is there a scenario where Notre Dame would join the ACC as a full member? Absolutely. In fact, the agreement is set so that if Notre Dame football ever joins a conference, it would be the ACC. But that's not the present situation, and until something drastic changes in the college football landscape, it seems unlikely that Notre Dame will be rushing to change its status with the league.