Paul Finebaum suggests SEC could be a viable option for Notre Dame amid conference realignment

As USC and UCLA took over the college sports news cycle with their move from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten, another school kept coming up in the same conversation: Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish have long been an independent and resisted previous overtures to join a conference, maintaining a national schedule.

But after the Big Ten became a true national conference — stretching coast-to-coast starting in 2024 — the conversation has heated back up about Notre Dame joining a league. SEC Network host Paul Finebaum addressed some potential suitors on ESPN’s First Take and made an interesting suggestion. Could the SEC make a run at the Fighting Irish?

It depends, especially since Finebaum noted the rocky relationship Notre Dame has with the Big Ten.

“Let’s start with a couple of things about Notre Dame,” Finebaum said. “They’re so important they have their own network, NBC, which runs out in 2025. They have this utterly bizarre relationship with the ACC. They play in every sport but hockey and football. Now, football’s only the biggest sport and if they withdraw from the ACC, they’ll pay a penalty, but they can get out. If you studied seventh grade geography, you say to yourself, ‘Why isn’t Notre Dame in the Big Ten?’ Notre Dame is practically a suburb of Chicago, where the Big Ten headquarters [is].

“But there’s a lot of bad blood. It goes way back. … They don’t really like the Big Ten. So what happens now? Either the ACC figures out some way to get them in, which I don’t know how they do at this point since Notre Dame has resisted everything. They played in the ACC during COVID and went to the Playoff. Or they bite the bullet and join the Big Ten or guess what? Notre Dame says, ‘We like the SEC. That’s where the action is. We’ll come down there.’ It sounds implausible, but in college football right now, nothing is implausible.”

Finebaum’s comments came one day after ESPN insider Pete Thamel talked about what Thursday’s moves mean for Notre Dame. He said the College Football Playoff is key in determining the Fighting Irish’s future — and a big reason joining a conference could be on the table.

“Notre Dame is going to follow Playoff access,” Thamel said, in part, on The Paul Finebaum Show. “And I think that’s one of the reasons why Jack Swarbrick was one of the linchpins of the administrators who put together the 12-team playoff and he was as disappointed as Greg Sankey was and others that it didn’t end up happening. The reasons for it not happening, honestly, when you look back and say, ‘Oh, the environment’s too hectic, we need to get things fixed. We need to calm them down.’”