Written by Bart Doan at The Comeback
Often when you’re doing either some intentional or non-intentional people watchin’, you come across two people and just turn to the person with you and say, “you know, that couple just looks like they go together.” Other times, you say, “that guy and gal just don’t seem to fit.”
There’s no real nuance to it past that. It’s neither an insult or a compliment for the most part. It’s just an affirmation of what looks like it fits versus what doesn’t. The truth is, it usually ends there and you go onto something else, because there’s no way of peeling back the curtain and finding out if you’re right or wrong.
Really, you probably don’t want to.
Which brings us to Notre Dame and their current college-dating level fling with the ACC. Neither one jumped into it thinking it’s going to work until the end of time, love prevailing over all. It’s mostly superficial … read: financially motivated. From across the mall, snarky people look over and say, “they don’t seem like they’d go out.”
ND exists in a world that wants them to do something that would be monetary suicide for the time being, which is to join a conference.
The bowl payout according to what the Internet will tell you for the Fiesta Bowl is $18 million per team, not counting over $2 million to cover travel costs. The base share for each Power 5 conference is just a shade under $28 million. Each conference receives $300,000 for each school that meets the APR score to compete in a postseason bowl game.
Ohio State, Notre Dame’s Fiesta Bowl opponent, will be splitting that $18 million across the conference. They’ll get their $300,000. ND will share their loot with no one. The Irish will also get a smooth $2.3 million for meeting the APR standard, which is automatic at Notre Dame. Every other independent gets just over $600,000 for doing the same thing.
It makes no sense to join a conference, and a whole lot of cents to not. The kicker is getting a schedule full of teams of any consequence to play you. Seeing what ND drives in television ratings, eyeballs, and ad revenue, that’s never going to be a problem. So what the heck is up with this, then, one would ask?
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