Notre Dame set to join Atlantic Coast Conference

This time, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford said the ACC is done expanding.

Just a little less than a year after adding Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the conference, the ACC Council of Presidents has unanimously voted to add Notre Dame in all sports except football.

And Swofford insists that this is it.

“There is no need to add a 16th team to the league and there’s no intention of doing so. In fact, from a practical standpoint it is illogical,” he said.

“Obviously if we brought in a 16th member in, then that causes an imbalance in our football divisions.”

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the move is set to take place before the 2015-16 athletic season.

With the move, the Fighting Irish become the sixth team in nine years to leave the Big East Conference for the ACC. In addition to accepting Notre Dame, the ACC also increased its conference exit fee to three times the conference’s operating budget. Right now, that’s in excess of $50 million.

Though the Fighting Irish are not joining the ACC in football competition, they have somewhat softened their stance on their traditional independent status.

Within the agreement, Notre Dame will play five ACC opponents in football every season, alternating between years of two and three home games.

In addition to being partial members of the ACC, Notre Dame will only receive part of the ACC’s shared television revenue. Swarbrick said, though, that the money was not a factor in this decision.

“This wasn’t a financial decision,” he said. “It’s financially neutral for us and we don’t foresee that changing anytime soon.”

Notre Dame has its own contract with NBC for broadcasting football games and will continue to do so but the ACC has a deal with ESPN.

When it comes to divvying up the rights to those games, Swofford said that Notre Dame games in South Bend or at neutral sites will remain NBC’s but ACC games or ACC hosted games will be ESPN.

Financially, the ACC designates 80 percent of its television revenue to football and 20 percent to basketball. So Notre Dame will receive one-fifteenth of that 20 percent for their participation in basketball and the Olympic sports.

For the first 60 years of the ACC’s existence, the conference has held a strict all-or-nothing stance on membership. Notre Dame is the first exception to that.

Swofford said the change in approach is due to the changing landscape in the world of college sports. The Notre Dame administration wanted to make it clear that, regardless of football, the Fighting Irish were fully committed to their new conference affiliation.

“I just want to say emphatically and clearly, that aside, we’re all-in in the ACC,” Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins said.

“We’re committed to this conference for athletic purposes, but more deeply, as (Wake Forest president) Nathan Hatch articulated, for the affinity of institutions and the affinity of values that exist.”

North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham attended Notre Dame for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees and worked in the athletic department in South Bend for 14 years from 1988 to 2002.

He said that he felt this move to the ACC was the perfect fit for Notre Dame at this point in their history and the ACC’s history as well.

Cunningham also competed for the Irish as a member of the golf team in 1982-83.

“Calling me a former athlete is a real stretch,” Cunningham said with a laugh. “I think it’s really great for their Olympic sport programs. I think it’s good for ours. They’re highly competitive in 26 sports. It’ll be good for them but I think the student athletes will enjoy the experience of playing other ACC schools.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.