Wednesday morning the Atlantic Coast Conference Council of Presidents accepted the University of Notre Dame as the ACC’s 15th member.
The decision was reached after a unanimous vote.
The Fighting Irish will compete in all ACC sponsored sports except football but have agreed to play five ACC schools in football every season.
“We have monitored the changing conference landscape for many months and have concluded that moving to the ACC is the best course of action for us,” Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame Vice President and Director of Athletics said in the ACC’s press release.
“We are able to maintain our historic independence in football, join in the ACC’s non-BCS bowl package, and provide a new and extremely competitive home for our other sports.”
The ACC is in its 60th year of existence and started out with just eight members including South Carolina. After South Carolina left in 1971, Georgia Tech joined in 1978. The ACC expanded to nine teams in 1991 when Florida State joined and added Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College in 2004 and 2005.
Pittsburgh and Syracuse will join the ACC in 2013. The release does not specify when Notre Dame will join the conference.
The Council of Presidents also voted to increase the conference exit fee to three times the annual operating costs — making it more than $50 million.
