Notre Dame's AD reveals the ACC's surprising campaign against the Irish, questioning the logic behind damaging a key partnership.
This has been an extremely eventful month between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the ACC. This past Sunday, everything came to a head when it was announced that the Irish would be left out of the playoffs for Alabama, a team that lost three games including a 14-point loss to a 5-7 team and a 21-point loss to Georgia in the SEC Championship game, and the Miami Hurricanes who Notre Dame lost to back in week one of the season.
Over the past month, the ACC took blatant shots at the Notre Dame football program and launched a three and a half week campaign against the Irish lobbying for the committee to rank the Hurricanes above Notre Dame. This was an extremely peculiar move, especially by a conference that has such a strong business partnership with the Irish. Today, Notre Dame's athletic director talked through their relationship with the ACC and the factors that led to the strain.
"What we were really surprised by was how the ACC conference really went on a social media campaign, in my opinion, attacking our football program," Bevacqua explained. "It puzzled us that a conference that's home to over 600 of our student athletes walking around this campus today chose to go down that road. Intellectually I understand it, but I certainly don't agree with it. Why would you attack an unbelievably important business partner of yours in football, and a member of your conference in 24 other sports? I'm one person. I don't see the logic in that. I know other leaders at the university didn't see the logic in that."
Notre Dame and the ACC have had a working relationship dating back to 2014, that was the first year their scheduling agreement went into effect. There's this idea that the Irish need the ACC more than the ACC needs Notre Dame. Bevacqua brought up some interesting numbers to debunk this idea and that there is a mutual benefit to this relationship.
"Since 2014 when we started our football relationship with the ACC, if you look at stadiums, ACC games sell out roughly 23% of the time," Bevacqua stated. "When Notre Dame goes to an ACC site, it's 90% of the time. When you think about ratings for ACC football games when they play Notre Dame, there's a tremendous lift. I don't understand why you would go on a social media campaign to attack an important partner."
"Who's some of our important partners in the football space, NBC," Bevacqua continued. "We wouldn't do that to NBC. Now, I understand they have to stand up for their teams in football, we just think there's other ways to do it. It has created damage; I'm not going to shy away from that. And that's just not me speaking. People that are much more important at this university than me feel the same way. So I think it has done some real damage. I think the ACC knows that."
There's a lot of questions surrounding Notre Dame's future with the ACC and it's a future that remains unclear. Bevacqua did his best to explain what the immediate next steps were, but this will undoubtedly, be a rough road ahead between the Atlantic Coastal Conference and their one of, if not the largest, business partner.
"We haven't really given all that a ton of thought," Bevacqua said. "I mean, are we looking for an apology? To be quite frank, I don't think an apology does anything or unwinds what has happened. But, at the right time, we'll sit down with the ACC leadership and hopefully have a very frank, honest and hopefully productive conversation. But I would tell you that time's not now."
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