Two days after Notre Dame followed its snub by the College Football Playoff by withdrawing from the postseason entirely, the school’s athletic director likened the selection committee’s shifting rankings of the Fighting Irish to musical chairs and called the university’s relationship with the Atlantic Coast Conference strained.
There was “no good explanation” for leaving Notre Dame out of the 12-team field,” athletic director Pete Bevacqua said at a news conference on the school’s South Bend, Indiana, campus.
“I’m a million-percent biased when it comes to Notre Dame, but you ask anybody in college football, we’re one of the best teams in the country,” he said. “We’re one of those handful of teams that could absolutely win the national championship this year and then standing up here today knowing we have zero percent chance of proving that on the field is a bitter pill to swallow.”
Bevacqua said he was “flabbergasted” by social-media posts in November by the conference that used graphics comparing the resumes of Miami and Notre Dame that suggested Miami, which had narrowly beaten Notre Dame in the season’s first week, had the stronger case for playoff inclusion. Miami earned the playoff’s final at-large bid, while Notre Dame was the first team left out of the 12-team field Sunday.
“All things can be healed, I’m not going to be overly dramatic here,” Bevacqua said. “But it did strain the relationship. It strained the relationship.”
Bevacqua, who is in his second year as athletic director after formerly being the chairman of NBC Sports, said he had contacted the athletic director at Miami to congratulate him on the Hurricanes’ inclusion. He said his issue was with the conference’s messaging. Miami is a full member of the ACC. Though most Notre Dame sports are affiliated fully with the conference, and the Fighting Irish football team has since 2014 agreed to play five ACC opponents per season, the football team nonetheless remains independent.
Bevacqua questioned “why would you attack an unbelievably important business partner of yours in football and a member of your conference in 24 other sports?”
“Are we looking for an apology? To be quite frank, I don’t think an apology does anything or unwinds what has happened,” he later said. “But at the right time, we’ll sit down with the ACC leadership, and I think have a hopefully, a very frank, honest, hopefully productive conversation. But I would tell you that time’s not now.”
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement Monday that “at no time was it suggested by the ACC that Notre Dame was not a worthy candidate for inclusion in the (playoff) field.”
“With that said,” Phillips’ statement continued, “when it comes to football, we have a responsibility to support and advocate for all 17 of our football-playing member institutions, and I stand behind our conference efforts to do just that leading up to the College Football Playoff Committee selections. … We are thrilled for the University of Miami while also understanding and appreciating the significant disappointment of the Notre Dame players, coaches and program.”
Notre Dame started the season by losing its first two games by a combined four points. It then won its next 10 to finish 10-2. As part of the playoff’s agreement with ESPN to broadcast the playoff, the network televises the selection committee’s rankings weekly during the season’s final six weeks. In the first set of rankings Notre Dame was 10th, and safely in the field, while Miami was 18th. Notre Dame never fell lower than 10th the rest of the season until Sunday’s final rankings, when they slid to 11th and were the first team left out.
“These rankings … they can’t be a game of musical chairs at a fifth-grade birthday party, and that’s what it felt like to us,” Bevacqua said.
Bevacqua confirmed that the school had signed a memorandum of understanding with the College Football Playoff that, starting next season, guarantees Notre Dame a berth if the playoff bracket stays at 12 teams and Notre Dame is ranked 12th or higher.
The school has been criticized for its decision Sunday to forgo a bowl game shortly after it was left out of the playoff, over concerns of the precedent it could set in future seasons by teams denied a playoff berth.
The team’s decision was “solely isolated to this year,” Bevacqua said, and was made after Irish coach Marcus Freeman surveyed the team’s captains, Bevacqua said, suggesting that some players would have opted out of playing in a non-playoff bowl.
“The unanimous message that came back was, we are such a close team, those guys in that locker room that they wanted to make sure that the last team that took the field as part of the 2025 Notre Dame team was the same team that took the field when we got off the plane in Miami” for the season opener, Bevacqua said.
“… This was a team with national championship aspirations. This was a team that was unbelievably close-knit, and in the crazy world of major college football emotions, you find out you’re not in the CFP and you’re shocked and then you get a call, hey do you want to go play in this bowl game?”
Freeman is 43-12 as Notre Dame’s coach and Bevacqua said part of his job was to ensure that the coach feels valued at Notre Dame amid what could be interest from NFL teams with coaching openings.
“I make sure that he knows that he will be where he deserves to be, and that is at the top, top, top tier of college football coaches when it comes to compensation every year,” Bevacqua said.
Notre Dame’s exclusion renewed the spotlight on its unique status within college football’s shifting structure. Though dozens of teams have switched conference allegiances in recent years and created two, extra-large and extra-powerful conferences in the Big Ten and SEC, Notre Dame football has remained independent.
The bulk of schools’ revenue comes from their slice of their conference’s media-rights agreement. Notre Dame has been able to remain independent thanks to having a media-rights deal — NBC has broadcast Notre Dame games since 1991, and their latest agreement goes through the 2029 season — all to itself.
Notre Dame began playing five ACC opponents annually in 2014. That scheduling arrangement led to an awkward dynamic this season as the College Football Playoff’s selection committee was weighing both Notre Dame and Miami. The lobbying had even reached the White House.
“If the University of Miami gets screwed out of the College Football Playoff after going 10-2 and beating Notre Dame, the whole thing should be scrapped and [President Trump] is gonna have to take over next year,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former Senator from Florida, said Dec. 2 while seated next to Trump at a cabinet meeting.
Bevacqua cited the ACC’s social-media posts Monday on the “Dan Patrick Show” when saying that the ACC had “certainly done permanent damage to the relationship between the conference and Notre Dame.”
Bevacqua added Tuesday that “we were definitely being targeted,” in the ACC’s posts.
“For better or for worse we have a different relationship with the ACC than any other team in college football other than the teams that are in the ACC because we’re in the ACC for 24 sports, we have a scheduling agreement with the ACC, and again, the ACC does wonderful things for Notre Dame. But we bring tremendous football value to the ACC and we didn’t understand why you would go out of your way to try to damage us in the process.”
