SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Maybe the first potential cracks in Notre Dame’s independence showed before USC and UCLA traded a century of tradition for a better deal halfway across the country with the Big Ten on Thursday.
In recent weeks, as Notre Dame’s army of fundraisers prepared for the university’s next capital campaign, the conversations with major donors not only featured athletics but sometimes led with it. The asks covered facilities and endowments, ways for Notre Dame athletics to keep pace as expenses outstrip revenues. The school has been coming to terms with this new normal for years, getting its Golden Dome around the athletic department no longer being a perpetual windfall. Still, Notre Dame had been reluctant to make athletics the tip of its fundraising spear.
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The fact it changed tactics was an admission it had to.
When Notre Dame made the Fiesta Bowl in Charlie Weis’ first season as head coach, pocketing a full Bowl Championship Series participant’s share of $14.5 million, some of the money went toward funding financial aid and finishing the Jordan Hall of Science. Back then, independence was a profit opportunity for Notre Dame. When the Big Ten Network launched 18 months later in 2007, the math around Notre Dame’s independence began to change. What was a revenue generator slowly became a luxury tax.
That bill is not due today after USC and UCLA joined the Big Ten, with the sport hurtling toward two superconferences everyone else will be jockeying to join. But it would be inexcusable for athletics director Jack Swarbrick not to model a future for Notre Dame as full conference partners with USC, Ohio State and Michigan.
Because while Notre Dame’s athletics budget has become strained, the way to fill the gap has never been more obvious. Joining the Big Ten — minus whatever penalty would be incurred by walking out on the ACC, a figure that’s not entirely clear — could be a financial windfall for Notre Dame’s athletic department even if it would be a cultural strain for the university.
In 2020, the SEC generated $777.8 million of total revenue, with schools earning $54.6 million. The Big Ten generated about $680 million, with each school taking home an average of $46.1 million. Compare that to the ACC, which set a league record the same year at $578 million, up $80 million in the lone season Notre Dame played as a full member. That still only came out to a $36.1 million payout per school.
Those yawning gaps came before Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC and USC and UCLA joined the Big Ten. The ACC has added no inventory and is drowning under a television contract that’s not up for renewal until 2035-36. Stay with the ACC through that date and Notre Dame may be so far behind financially that it’s adrift in a potential new world of college athletics with unlimited coaching staffs and unlimited scholarships. There’s also the potential for Clemson, Florida State and Miami to bolt the ACC, leaving Notre Dame to ponder the point of the partnership altogether.
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In that world, an NBC contract that already doesn’t match deals in the Big Ten and SEC likely gets worse without marquee opponents.
These are the books Swarbrick must attempt to balance. And rocketing expenses at some point need revenues to match. Some estimates have the Big Ten’s average payout per team at nearly $40 million more than the ACC’s per school by the end of the decade, and that’s before adding in USC and UCLA. It’s obviously before adding Notre Dame, too.
If Big Ten membership feels like Notre Dame is talking out of both sides of its mouth, it is. At least, it would have been.
Joining the conference 20 years ago meant boxing Notre Dame in geographically, taking a national brand and threatening to make it Penn State, only a couple of states west. But joining the Big Ten now does not mean what it meant last week. The conference’s western border isn’t Lincoln; it’s Los Angeles. The conference’s eastern border isn’t State College, it’s New York City and Washington, D.C. The Big Ten isn’t a regional outfit anymore; it’s college football’s only national association with a Notre Dame Law graduate leading it. Notre Dame joining the league wouldn’t preserve the league the way it did with the ACC. It would make the Big Ten unassailable in an industry where knives are always drawn.
For everything that changed Thursday, the reasons for Notre Dame to join a conference really have not. The school needs access to the national championship. It needs a home for its Olympic sports. It needs a broadcast partner. USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten doesn’t change all of those realities today. But it might threaten all three a year from now if big-time college football gets its own version of the AFC (Big Ten) and NFC (SEC), leaving the rest of the sport in an awkward in-between.
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The question for Swarbrick now is how far he can see ahead in the fog of realignment war. Because as much as Notre Dame values its independence, the cost-benefit analysis of that expense may be changing.
No, Notre Dame doesn’t need to run from the ACC today. But it needs to start plotting its next course, whether it takes it or not.
(Photo: Matt Cashore / USA Today)
