Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua reveals he has talked to Greg Sankey about CFP format after Irish's snub

With what’s happened the last few days in South Bend, namely in how their relationship has deteriorated with the ACC, some how wondered if this is what leads to a different conference affiliation for Notre Dame. Ears then perked up this morning, with news that the Fighting Irish had talked to those in charge of another league in the FBS.

AD Pete Bevacqua revealed that during his press conference on Tuesday. He said that, over the past two days, he had spoken to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey.

“Since Sunday, the only commissioner I’ve spoken to, and I’ve had a couple of great conversations with him, is Greg Sankey,” said Bevacqua. “Greg and I talk all the time. I can’t tell you how much I admire Greg and his leadership.”

This does not mean what some may assume, though, as Notre Dame is not joining the Southeastern Conference. Bevacqua said those conversations with Sankey, with them being two of the most powerful voices in all of college football, have mostly been more about the format of the College Football Playoff, which the Irish were controversially left out of on Sunday. With that, Bevacqua expressed his preference, wanting the best teams in the field while also best preserving the regular season, for an expansion of the field to 16.

“And, you know, good conversations, really about format, process. Gave him my viewpoint on the process. He shared some thoughts that he had with me that, obviously, are between Greg and me,” said Bevacqua. “Format? Greg knows. They all know how I feel about the format. Put the process aside. The format, being, you know, four teams, twelve teams, fourteen teams, sixteen teams, a thousand teams? It should be sixteen teams, in my opinion, with five automatic qualifiers and eleven at-larges. Think about this year. If we had four teams, it would have been perfect. I don’t think anybody would argue that those aren’t the right four teams that are one through four, right, the way they’re playing – Texas Tech, Ohio State, Indiana, and Georgia…Sixteen would have been perfect. Notre Dame, Texas, Vanderbilt, you know, who else is in there.

“You know, year by year, you’re never going to have the same data points each year. It’s never going to work out perfectly, whether you have four teams, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen. What I like about sixteen is it does create more opportunity, it does create more narratives around more schools and yet preserves the integrity and importance of the regular season, and I think that’s one of the greatest things college football has going for it. The regular season is more important in college football than it is in any other sport by a mile…College football? I mean, hey we see it. We see it last year. We saw it this year. We knew last year, when we lost to NIU? We had no wiggle room. Every game was a bowl game. Every game was a CFP game. This year, after we lost in the last second to A&M? Zero room for error. Turns out, we didn’t even have zero room for error. But, I think sixteen teams, with that five and eleven breakdown, is the way to go. And I think a vast, vast majority of people in the CFP management room feel the same way.”