Two days after Notre Dame followed its College Football Playoff setback by bowing out of the postseason altogether, the school’s athletic director likened the selection committee’s shifting rankings of the Fighting Irish to musical chairs and called the university’s relationship with the Atlantic Coast Conference “strained.”
There was “no good explanation” for excluding Notre Dame from the 12 teams,” athletic director Pete Bevacqua said at a news conference. press conference on the school’s campus in South Bend, Indiana.
“I’m a million percent biased when it comes to Notre Dame, but you ask anyone in college football, we’re one of the best teams in the country,” he said. “We’re one of a handful of teams that could absolutely win the national championship this year and to show up here today knowing we have no chance to prove that on the field is a bitter pill to swallow.”
Bevacqua said he was “stunned” by ACC Social Media Posts in November, which used charts comparing the resumes of Miami and Notre Dame suggesting that Miami, which had narrowly beaten Notre Dame in the first week of the season, had the strongest case for inclusion in the postseason. Miami won the final at-large playoff bid, while Notre Dame was the first team left out of the 12 teams on Sunday.
“Everything can be cured, I’m not going to be too dramatic here,” Bevacqua said. “But it put a strain on the relationship. It put a strain on the relationship.”
Bevacqua, who is in his second year as athletic director after serving as president of NBC Sports, said he contacted Miami’s athletic director to congratulate him on the Hurricanes’ inclusion. He said his problem was with the message of the conference. Miami is a full member of the ACC. Although most Notre Dame sports are fully affiliated with the conference and the Fighting Irish football team has agreed since 2014 to play five ACC opponents per season, the football team nonetheless remains independent.
Bevacqua asked, “Why would you attack an incredibly important business partner of yours in football and a member of your conference in 24 other sports?”
“Are we looking for an apology? To be quite frank, I don’t think an apology does anything or changes anything about what happened,” he later said. “But at the right time, we sit down with the leadership of the ACC and I think we will have, hopefully, a very frank, honest and hopefully productive conversation. But I would tell you that now is not the time.”
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement Monday that “at no time did the ACC suggest that Notre Dame was not a worthy candidate for inclusion in the (playoff) field.”
“That said,” Phillips’ statement continued, “when it comes to football, we have a responsibility to support and advocate for the interests of our 17 member institutions that play football, and I support our conference’s efforts to do just that ahead of the College Football Playoff committee selections. … We are excited for the University of Miami while also understanding and appreciating the significant disappointment of Notre Dame’s players, coaches and program.”
Notre Dame started the season losing its first two games by a total of 4 points. He then won his next 10 to finish 10-2. As part of the playoffs’ deal with ESPN to broadcast the playoffs, the network broadcasts the selection committee’s rankings each week during the final six weeks of the season. In the first set of rankings, Notre Dame was No. 10 and safe on the field, while Miami was No. 18. Notre Dame never fell below No. 10 the rest of the season until Sunday’s final rankings, where it slipped to No. 11 and was the first team shut out.
“These rankings…they can’t be a game of musical chairs at a fifth-grade birthday party, and that’s how we felt,” Bevacqua said.
Bevacqua confirmed the school signed a memorandum of understanding with the College Football Playoff that, starting next season, guarantees Notre Dame a berth if the playoff bracket remains at 12 teams and Notre Dame is seeded No. 12 or higher.
The school was criticized for its decision Sunday to forfeit a bowl game shortly after he was excluded from the playoffsdue to concerns about the precedent it could set for teams being denied a playoff spot.
The team’s decision was “uniquely isolated to this year,” Bevacqua said. This was achieved after Irish coach Marcus Freeman questioned the team’s captains, Bevacqua said, suggesting that some players would have opted not to play in a non-playoff bowl.
“The unanimous message that came back was that we are such a close team, these guys in that locker room that they wanted to make sure that the last team that took the field as part of the 2025 Notre Dame team was the same team that took the field when we got off the plane in Miami” for the season opener, Bevacqua said.
“This was a team that aspired to win a national championship,” Bevacqua said. “It was an incredibly close-knit team, and in the crazy high-emotion world of college football, you find out you’re not in the CFP and you’re shocked, and then you get a call: ‘Hey, do you want to go play this bowl game?’”
Freeman is 43-12 as Notre Dame’s coach and Bevacqua said part of his job is to make sure the coach feels valued at Notre Dame amid what could be interest from NFL teams with coaching openings.
“I’m making sure he knows he’s going to be where he deserves to be, and that’s at the highest level of college football coaches in terms of compensation every year,” Bevacqua said.
Notre Dame’s exclusion put a spotlight on its unique status within the changing structure of college football. Although dozens of teams have switched conference allegiances in recent years and created two extra-large, extra-power conferences in the Big Ten and SEC, Notre Dame football has remained independent.
Most of the schools’ revenue comes from their share of their conference’s media rights deal. Notre Dame was able to remain independent thanks to a media rights deal — NBC has broadcast Notre Dame games since 1991, and their latest deal covers the 2029 season — all to itself.
Notre Dame began playing five ACC opponents each year in 2014. That scheduling arrangement led to a tricky dynamic this season as the College Football Playoff selection committee weighed both Notre Dame and Miami. The lobbying had even reached the White House.
“If the University of Miami gets knocked out of the College Football Playoff after going 10-2 and beating Notre Dame, that whole thing should be abandoned and (President Donald Trump) will have to take over next year,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former Florida senator, said Dec. 2 while sitting next to Trump at a Cabinet meeting.
Bevacqua cited the ACC’s social media posts Monday on the “Dan Patrick Show” in saying the ACC had “certainly caused permanent damage to the relationship between the conference and Notre Dame.”
Bevacqua added Tuesday that “we were definitely targeted” in the ACC’s messages.
“For better or worse, we have a different relationship with the ACC than any other team in college football other than the teams that are in the ACC because we are in the ACC for 24 sports, we have a scheduling agreement with the ACC, and again, the ACC does wonderful things for Notre Dame,” Bevacqua said. “But we bring tremendous football value to the ACC and we couldn’t understand why you would go out of your way to try to harm us in the process.”
