Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said College Football Playoff access will be a key factor if the school ever decides to join a conference.
The Fighting Irish are college football’s most famous school without a conference and a natural focus for fans in the wake of USC and UCLA’s surprising decision to move to the Big Ten as the conference expanded to 16 teams. If the conference wanted to grow even further, it reasons that Notre Dame would be its top target.
Would the Irish want to join the Big Ten? Clearly the school is not currently in a rush to join a conference. And Swarbrick said Wednesday in a question and answer session that the school felt “validated” in its decision to remain independent amid the latest conference shuffle.
“I don’t know if we’re stronger but it’s certainly felt like a validation of our decision to be independent,” Swarbrick said. “So many of the stories have been ‘What will Notre Dame do?’ and discussing Notre Dame’s significance and the importance of we made a decision to do one thing or another.”
If Notre Dame did make a move to a conference at some point, Swarbrick said that the school would take its potential media rights deals into account along with access to the playoff. The Irish have made the College Football Playoff twice in the last four seasons.
“One is, do we have a committed broadcast partner who not only will carry all of our home games nationally but will compensate us for our media rights in a way that allows us to be competitive?” Swarbrick rhetorically asked. “It starts with the question of media partner. Second is our access to the College Football Playoff. Do we, as an independent, retain adequate access? I think we’ve proved conclusively in the last eight years that we’ve had it. Both those things will play out over time, I can’t predict how much time.”
The current four-team playoff looks set to expand at some point by the end of its current deal through 2024 and Swarbrick said he expected the playoff to be figured out in the near future. While expansion seems like a near-unanimous topic, how the playoff will expand has been the holdup so far. Conferences can’t yet agree on how the playoff should be structured.
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Notre Dame famously has a deal with NBC for its home football games as part of its independent status. The Irish’s road games are broadcast by the TV partners of their…