Why two writers from The Athletic believe Notre Dame needs to join a conference

Notre Dame fans might not have had much interest in the College Football Playoff national championship game this past January. And they probably weren’t alone in that line of thinking.

Alabama. Georgia. Mehhhhhh. Seen that before.

But Fighting Irish fans surely had their eyes and ears open for news from meetings taking place that week in Indianapolis. Meetings with college football brass concerning the future of the CFP.

Notre Dame finished No. 5 in the CFP rankings that decided the playoff. In a 12-team format, the Irish would have been soundly in the field. So when the meetings did not come to a resolution and it was made certain there would not be an expansion of the playoff before the current contract is up after the 2025 season, Irish fans probably felt a lot like SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who lobbied hard for augmentation.

The Athletic’s Matt Fortuna asked Sankey what the next step would be immediately after the meetings wrapped up.

“In typical Greg Sankey fashion, he smiled at me and said, ‘I’m going to walk across the street to watch the College Football Playoff championship game between two great teams from the SEC,'” Fortuna said on The Andy Staples Show. “That was one of those, ‘Hey guys, you had your chance. Now we can essentially do whatever we want.’ That was true then, and it’s even more true now.”

It’s more true now because Sankey isn’t at the helm of the only “super” conference in the country. The Big Ten joined the SEC in that regard by adding USC and UCLA last week, much in the same way the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma last summer. Those two conferences are the power brokers in college football now. What they say goes.

And even mighty Notre Dame might not be able to do much about that.

“To me, after last Thursday, my whole, ‘Notre Dame never needs to join a conference’ stance ended,” Andy Staples said on his show. “I don’t know if you can be independent in a world where there are two super conferences.”

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Fortuna said he’s been asked “a million times” whenever anything monumental happens altering the landscape of college athletics if Notre Dame would be forced to join a conference in a reactionary measure. He has always answered with one, two-letter word: No. That was even his response when Texas and Oklahoma threw their curveballs last summer.

“I remember thinking, ‘Boy, this is where you see the value of independence,'” Fortuna said. “You’ve got 64 teams on pins and needles right now wondering what’s going to happen to their league, who they’re going to be playing, what the future holds, and Notre Dame is playing a hand while they’re counting cards. They’re gaming the playoff system while creating the playoff system.”

He’s hesitant to answer that way now.

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Notre Dame can still game the system to a degree, though. The Irish don’t have to rush to the Big Ten in the way USC and UCLA felt obligated to. Notre Dame’s situation isn’t as dire. The Irish have been independent for nearly a century and a half and can afford to remain so while the dust settles, even if they’re making pennies in TV rights deals compared to what members of the SEC and Big Ten will soon put in their pockets. Key word: soon. Not now.

Oklahoma and Texas won’t officially be members of the SEC for a few years. The same goes for USC and UCLA and the Big Ten. The Big 12 and Pac-12 grants of rights are delaying the process. The holdup serves Notre Dame as a period of time in which director of athletics Jack Swarbrick can weigh his options and attempt to decipher what the Irish’s best move is.

For the time being, it might be to not move at all.

Even with the SEC and Big Ten set to call the shots in college football, Notre Dame wields some power of its own. It always has. The world wants to know what Notre Dame will do.

“Everybody is waiting on a certain group of people who wear gold helmets, who reside in South Bend, Indiana,” Staples said. “Everybody is waiting on Notre Dame.”

Fortuna is waiting on Notre Dame to join the Big Ten. To him — and so many others — it makes more sense now than ever before.

“If you’re Notre Dame, you got to look at it and say, ‘Hey, we can still play (USC) every year. We can still get to the east coast every year. We can keep pretty much all of our rivals. And oh, by the way, we’ll be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million or more per year from our media rights deal.'”

The Big Ten still has to secure that media rights deal. The conference’s current contracts expire at the end of the 2022 season. Hence, the waiting on Notre Dame. The numbers for new deals would be a whole lot different — a whole lot higher — if a brand as big as Notre Dame was included in them. The best-case scenario for the conference is for Notre Dame to join before the new rights deal is penned.

That’s not necessarily the best-case scenario for Notre Dame.

“Notre Dame can negotiate because Notre Dame can get whatever it wants,” Staples said. “It can say, ‘I want a full share.’ It can say, ‘I’m bringing a lot more share than any of these other places. And, oh by the way, the SEC would also take us.’ Everyone that has a conference that plays football would take Notre Dame. It’s not up for debate.”

Just because Fortuna believes the Big Ten makes the most sense now does not mean it’s going to happen now. If there is one school currently outside the Big Ten or SEC that still has a say in the order of operations, it’s Notre Dame. Not Clemson or Florida State or Washington or Oregon.

Notre Dame.

The super conferences might run the show, but the show doesn’t go on without one of its brightest stars.

“There is a lot of commentary out there like, ‘They got to act fast. They don’t want to be boxed into a situation,'” Fortuna said. “I don’t see them ever being on the outside looking in with any of this. There is going to be a seat at the table for them at whatever table they decide to go to.”