As a lifelong Notre Dame fan, I never wanted them to join a conference for football. That changed on Nov. 2, 2019.

After I came home from celebrating your World Champion Washington Nationals, I caught the end of Notre Dame’s thrilling victory over Virginia Tech. There was just one problem — it meant absolutely nothing. Despite winning 10 games, Notre Dame’s fate was sealed following its loss to Michigan the week prior. It was playing in Orlando, in the Camping World or Citrus Bowl, and nothing was going to change.

Even Notre Dame’s spectacular beatdown of a very, very good Navy team changed nothing. It ended up as the most depressing 11-win season I could ever remember from any team, and it was due precisely to the fact that Notre Dame is not in a conference.

Where independence was once a huge advantage, especially when it came to bowl games, everything in the college football playoff era is predicated on conferences. Look at the Orange Bowl, for example, where an inferior Virginia team played because of its ACC membership.

Even though Notre Dame’s goal will always be to win the national championship, even that would be aided greatly by a conference championship. Currently, they have to win every games to make the playoff. That’s a high bar to clear. But a conference championship would allow Notre Dame to enter the playoff discussion with one or even two losses.

Heck, just look at this year and what could have been if Notre Dame ended its season with a win over Clemson in the ACC title game. Sure, that seems highly unlikely based on how good Clemson has looked all year, but at least it would’ve been something exciting for its fans to dream about.

Let’s not act like independence is still good for business either, as Notre Dame’s legendary sellout streak finally ended in November, as fans realized the games no longer mattered.

It’s time for Notre Dame to join the ACC and it’s realistic, if the conference makes some significant changes that would help it out too.

Invite Notre Dame…and West Virginia to join

As much as Notre Dame needs to join a conference, West Virginia needs to join a better conference more than any other team in the Power Five, and maybe across all college sports. All the issues UConn fans had with the AAC are even worse for West Virginia in the Big 12, but the Big 12 is a Power Five conference so they put up with it.

West Virginia should be in the ACC tomorrow. All of its main rivals play there. The travel would be cut down by an order of magnitude. Its basketball team is more than good enough to fit in perfectly. And the ACC’s invite of Louisville put to rest any “concerns” about education. I don’t need to belabor why this make sense for West Virginia, so let’s address why it makes so much sense for the ACC.

For one, the ACC can invite both and finally fix its absurdly stupid division split.

The Big East division vs the traditional ACC division

All I know about ACC’s divisions for football is that Clemson and Florida State play in one division, which has won every ACC title game for the past decade. I don’t know if it’s the Coastal or Atlantic without the help of Google.

A geographic north/south split has never worked for the ACC because it would require a split between the North Carolina schools, which are already divided and pretty unhappy about it. However, the addition of Notre Dame and West Virginia would give them the cleanest split possible.

Big East division:

Syracuse

Boston College

Pitt

West Virginia

Notre Dame

Miami

Virginia Tech

Louisville

ACC division:

UNC

Duke

Wake

NC State

Clemson

Florida State

Georgia Tech

Virginia

That still leaves a problem with Notre Dame, as they need to play a national schedule and 8 or 9 conference games, in addition to must games vs USC and Navy, would be a no-go. Unless…

ACC Plays 7 Conference Games

The fix here is easy, and revolutionary. The ACC would schedule 7 conference games for each team within their division without any crossover games. However, each team still needs to play 10 Power Five games per year, so they can play teams from the other division in the non-conference. This actually already happened this year when North Carolina played Wake Forest, so it’s not exactly a foreign concept.

Even more shocking is that despite years of football with the old Big East teams, a grand total of zero rivalries have been developed. Only two current conference games would absolutely need to still happen each year — Florida State/Miami and Virginia/Virginia Tech

Even the Thanksgiving scheduling becomes pretty easy with Notre Dame in the fold. While they recently have rotated between USC and Stanford on Thanksgiving weekend, they used to rotate between USC and Miami before Catholics vs Convicts made the rivalry too hot. Let’s bring it back!

Notre Dame goes back to rotating between USC and Miami to end the season somewhere warm. By jettisoning Stanford, Notre Dame would play USC, Navy, and 7 conference games, and still have three other games to schedule as they see fit. As an added bonus, the Pac-12 only has to deal with the Notre Dame issue every other year, as opposed to every year.

For the ACC, they can easily use newly independent UConn to play Syracuse or Boston College on Thanksgiving weekend to balance out the Notre Dame/Miami game.

Oh, and talk about burying the lede, but the Backyard Brawl is back every year!

Rivalry games:

2 games between the 4 North Carolina schools

Virginia/Virginia Tech

Clemson/South Carolina

Florida State/Florida

Georgia Tech/Georgia

Louisville/Kentucky

Pittsburgh/West Virginia

Even year:

ND at USC

Syracuse or BC vs Miami

Syracuse or BC vs UConn

Odd year:

ND at Miami

Syracuse vs BC

The TV Deal

Right now, Notre Dame has its own deal with NBC for home games. This should not be a concern to the ACC. Let NBC keep those 7 games if they want.

But maybe, just maybe, ESPN would be willing to fork over a small fortune to bring those games into the fold, especially in the wake of Fox’s attack on ESPN’s recent monopoly on college football. We’ve already seen CBS pull out of the ongoing SEC TV negotiations, so ESPN appears to be willing to spend.

Let’s Count the Positives

For Notre Dame, West Virginia, and the ACC, this all makes perfect sense.

West Virginia gets out of a bad situation and plays its natural, regional rivals again.

ACC gets a huge boost for its fledgling title game, as the Florida State/Clemson powers will likely get matched up annually with a huge football brand in Notre Dame, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, and maybe even Miami if they ever got their act together. Not only does it make for a more compelling game, it’ll drastically help the ACC’s chances of a constant presence in the playoff should Clemson ever stop going undefeated every year.

The Orange Bowl deal instantly becomes even better for the bowl, with potential invites to programs noted for its travel size in Notre Dame and West Virginia, to say nothing of bowls beneath it in the pecking order.

The entire conference gets back together as they should to play more regional games of interest. It should’ve been a huge red flag to the conference that UNC & Wake felt the need to schedule a non-conference game. No one cares about Pitt vs Wake Forest, but fans of those schools do care about Pitt vs Syracuse and Wake vs UNC. Not to mention that administrators will likely love the reduced travel costs.

Of course, this is college football we’re talking about. It all makes too much, so it won’t happen.

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