NCAA Basketball: Potential impact of collge football expanding the playoffs
Notre Dame could become a “full-time” ACC member
When you look into the details of the playoff expansion and how the 12-team bracket works, an interesting point is made about who is eligible to go where.
6 highest ranked conference champs & next 6 highest ranked teams will make @CFBPlayoff. 4 highest-ranked conference champs seeded 1-4 will receive 1st-round bye. Teams 5-12 will play 1st round at home field of highest-ranked team. Notre Dame/Independents can’t get 1st round bye
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) June 10, 2021
While Notre Dame is a member of the ACC for all of the Olympic sports, they’ve been an independent in college football since 1899. They’re one of the biggest and most prestigious names and currently have a lucrative deal with NBC for their games. The pandemic forced them to play a full ACC schedule, a league they have an agreement each year to play six games a year.
For independents, the new format has its positives and negatives. While there are six at-large spots, they’re ineligible to get a first-round bye as one of the top-4 seeds. The Fighting Irish can host a playoff game if seeded 5-8 but what if they’re truly the best or second-best team in the country? Their path to the national title would be unfair if they end up with the 1 seed in the semifinals.
After spending a year with ACC football, could Notre Dame make the move permanently? If they joined now, they’d be a top-3 team in the conference, just behind Clemson who they actually defeated last season. It would make sense to officially join and work out a deal with NBC to have the four non-conference games televised there, including the longstanding rivalry with the USC Trojans.
If this happens, that gives ACC football 15 teams, with one division having one more team. The conference could add another member and two teams to keep an eye on would include a former member in Maryland and West Virginia, a program that has always been a geographical outlier since moving from the Big East to the Big 12.
Both of those programs have recent basketball success and would be very competitive in the ACC for hoops while taking the Terrapins would be a blow to the Big Ten. This may not be very likely to happen but if Notre Dame becomes frustrated with the format, they can make a simple phone call to change that.