Absolutely everything is wrong with college football. No, I get it, you like going to games, and you should, but that doesn’t change what I said. From mega conferences to the ESPN rankings show every week, college football is simply a slave to big network money, whether it’s Disney/ESPN, Comcast, or FOX. Great old rivalries like Penn State-Pitt, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, Pitt-West Virginia, Notre Dame-Michigan, or whatever one you miss, all ended because of conferences, television money, and greed. Let’s be honest, did a single person in the world really want to see the Washington-Purdue game, or the Mizzou-Vanderbilt game, or the Stanford-Wake Forest game? Of course not. The four major conferences now have zero geographical sense, and more teams than can possibly play each other in a year. “Conference championships” literally decided by obscure tiebreakers and computers. The SEC literally had one (maybe two, if you think Michigan or Georgia Tech is actually good) good out of conference win as a collection of 16 schools, and yet they got five teams into the playoffs (at the expense of the one good team they beat), basically because their network runs the process. The conference hasn’t won a national title since the NIL took over the game, and I think the reasons are abundantly obvious for that (by the way, Ed O is a national treasure). It’s a paper tiger, but one that has to be held up because ESPN has so much at stake in them. The only teams down there with a chance to do anything now are teams who have large NIL potential, basically the Texas teams (include Oklahoma, because oil) and Georgia. It’s a joke.

Conferences no longer have anything to do with old rivalries, or geography, or anything sane. They have to do with television markets. The more big markets you are in, the more money you are worth, the better your conference becomes. This basically sucks for the game. I just got done ripping the SEC, but let me give them some credit here for a second, they are the only major conference that truly makes any geographic sense at this point, but it only works because they’re the only part of the country that is more obsessed with college football than the NFL. The ACC has decided to go north and west, and makes zero sense now. The Big 12 is literally a collection of whoever is left out of the other three. The Big Ten? It’s the worst offender, now literally holding court in almost all of the top ten markets in the country. I mean sure, we all wanted Rutgers-UCLA, right?

How you spend your money says everything about what matters to you. ESPN has the SEC. It also has the ACC, and it added quite a few dollars onto that TV deal to insure that it essentially had Notre Dame’s road games in the deal with the ACC (Usually three or four a year). Notre Dame gets about $17-22.1 million a year from the ACC according to Google AI (though the ACC claims that’s not football related), on top of their $50 million plus from NBC. The new revenue model adds about $10 million per school for the top teams, who now will play Notre Dame more often (for instance, Clemson will now play them for 12 years, starting in 2027). At the time of the deal, ESPN added $3 million per school (approximately $50 million) to the payout. That number has only grown. Finebaum and the other talking heads can claim Notre Dame isn’t the ratings giant it claims, but both Disney and Comcast pay out money that says otherwise. Clemson and Florida State are still unhappy with their media payouts, but they would almost certainly leave if the $10 million or so boost they got was suddenly gone. It’s basic math. Unless you think both Comcast/NBC and Disney/ESPN are morons, Notre Dame is clearly making everyone a lot of money. Does Notre Dame get to pocket a lot more money than the ACC teams? Yes, sure. It’s obviously worth it to them too though.

What everyone wants from Notre Dame is to strip them of their independent TV deal with NBC. It would make less than zero sense for Notre Dame to give that up voluntarily though. The ACC isn’t going to stop scheduling games with them if they add $50 million plus annually to their TV deal. Two Big Ten teams this year, and three next year, line up to play them. A pair of SEC teams seem to show up every year. All told, Notre Dame gets ten Power 4 games easily, and they don’t have to split money with teams who add little value. It pisses off fans from other teams, but let’s be honest, if Alabama could add this kind of value, they wouldn’t be sharing with Kentucky and Mississippi State. Same for Michigan and USC. Again, how you spend your money says what’s important to you.

The ACC promoting Miami’s case for the CFB Playoff is not on it’s face offensive. Miami is a member school, and splits the payout with the other member schools. Miami campaigning for Miami is also not an issue, of course they would. In fact, Miami getting in over Notre Dame isn’t really a problem, while I think Notre Dame is better and Miami isn’t a contender, Miami won the game. Miami wasn’t the issue. The issue was the efforts to which ESPN, the ACC and SEC’s TV partner, went to campaign for Alabama at the expense of Notre Dame, and the degree to which the ACC took part. Both Miami and Notre Dame were better teams than Alabama this year. Again, winning SEC games is not some special achievement anymore. The ACC putting the Miami-Notre Dame game on a loop on their ESPN administered network the week of the selection, not to mention direct attacks on social media, was harmful. If the ACC isn’t an ally, why is Notre Dame participating with them? Do we not think one of the other conferences would enter into a deal with Notre Dame that *adds* money to their TV payouts for every member school? Of course they would. The only reasons they are in conferences is money. Don’t kid yourself.

Notre Dame should leave the ACC. It would kill the ACC, yes, and maybe that’s not great, but it’s probably necessary to do any real damage to ESPN. Skipping the Bowl Game did directly hurt the bottom line, and did damage to the value of the bowl brand, which hurt ESPN too, but that’s not the big hit. Killing one of their conferences would send the message that ESPN and the conferences are not really in charge here. It’s time for the NCAA to re-assert control, and Notre Dame could speed up that process in football right now. Break an entire conference and set off a domino effect the other three can’t quite handle. Or better yet, form a true “scheduling consortium” with a few other powerhouse teams where everyone can have their own TV deals and show how useless these conferences are. The point is, once one school shows they can devalue an entire conference, the whole game is over. Someone will have to step in, and the only possible entity is the NCAA.

I know this isn’t popular, because Notre Dame is not as popular as it once was. In the 1900’s, the overwhelming majority of Americans didn’t go to college, so they chose their team allegiances based on other factors. Notre Dame being forced to go independent and travel the country, as well as their ties to the Catholic Church, built in millions of fans. Today, a lot more people go to college, and most of them don’t go to Notre Dame. They don’t like Notre Dame being unique, because people hate unique things, and their schools are not unique. They’re going to kick and scream about Notre Dame delivering a shock to the system. If Notre Dame has the courage to soldier through it though, everyone will be better off when the conferences die, for football (to be clear, they’re not as problematic in other sports). They’re out of control and need to be reigned back in.

The NCAA needs to separate “power four” football into it’s own division. The “group of 5” conferences are playing a different sport where there are smaller budgets, little TV money, and tiny bits of NIL. The 18 Big Ten teams, 16 SEC teams, 17 ACC teams, 16 Big 12 teams, Notre Dame, Oregon State, Washington State, UCONN, and between 1 and 9 more teams should be put into a separate division altogether. This would form a division of 72 to 80 teams, which should them be split into 8 regional divisions of 9 or 10 teams (based on which number you pick). You would play 8 or 9 division/conference games, against EVERYONE in the conference/division. The eight champions should make the playoff, period. You can schedule anyone you want with your 3 or 4 other games. This is the only sensible way forward, the only way for college football to act like a serious sport. Consolidate the “Group of 5” schools into four conferences and create a playoff for that division too. From pure budget perspectives, this would be fair.

Notre Dame can do what needs to be done here. Live by the values that made the program great- independence. It was forced on Notre Dame. Notre Dame is big enough to force it on the sport. Tear down this house of cards and do everyone a favor. Neuter the overrated SEC.