College Football

Notre Dame AD: 'Mystified' by ACC's 'Attack', Relationship Permanently 'Damaged'

Updated Dec. 8, 2025 1:34 p.m. ET

Notre Dame made headlines twice over the weekend: one, for not being selected to participate in the College Football Playoff, and two, for their bowing out of any potential bowl game invite as a result. Their athletic director, Pete Bevacqua, spoke on both of those issues at length on The Dan Patrick Show on Monday.

Bevacqua repeatedly made the point that Notre Dame had no problem with the teams that were selected for the CFP over them, saying again and again that Miami and Alabama, among others, were great teams – but so was Notre Dame. Their issue with this was the "process," which Bevacqua explained, as well as with the Atlantic Coast Conference and their politicking decisions. On the process:

"You know, every step along the way, since the first CFP rankings came out, we were led to believe we were in as long as we took care of business," Bevacqua told Patrick. "And we certainly took care of business with this 10-game winning streak. You think about that first ranking, we and Miami were both 6-2, they had already obviously beat us the first game of the year. They were 18th, we were 10th. You know, the only thing we did since that point was win every game by an average of over 30 points. And all of a sudden we’re 11th and on the outside looking in. When we sit and talk to [head coach Marcus Freeman], when we talk to our team, we don’t have any good answers for that.

"So we’re just really frustrated that we had the rug pulled out from underneath us."

And on the ACC:

"I would tell you again, I have tremendous respect for Miami; great team, great school. Their athletic director Dan Radakovich is a good friend. And all the teams in the ACC, wonderful universities. We have no gripes about any of the schools in the ACC. But we were mystified by the actions of the conference to attack, really, their biggest business partner in football, and a member of their conference in 24 of our other sports. I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t say that they have certainly done permanent damage to the relationship between the conference and Notre Dame.

"We didn’t appreciate the fact that we were singled out repeatedly, and compared to Miami — not by Miami, Miami has every right to do that — but it raised a lot of eyebrows here that the conference was taking shots at us. And you know that’s just not something we chose to do. We wouldn’t choose to do that in the future, and people might disagree with us but that’s just not something that we’d be comfortable with."

When asked if Notre Dame was going to reevaluate its relationship with the ACC, Bevacqua stated that, "I would just say it’s been strained… you never say irreparable, but it’s opened our eyes, and it caught our attention."

Since 2014, Notre Dame and the ACC have had an agreement where the independent Fighting Irish would schedule at least five conference opponents each season. That is a non-insignificant chunk of Notre Dame's year, and also a considerable number of high-profile matchups for ACC schools. Schools like Miami, whose victory over Notre Dame in the first week of the 2025 season helped propel them to the CFP and keep the Irish out.

What exactly was said behind closed doors by the committee isn't known as of yet, but publicly the ACC did include Notre Dame in its pro-Miami case for the CFP through social media posts that were designed to strengthen the Hurricanes' case at the expense of the Fighting Irish.

Bevacqua stressed that Miami wasn't the issue, though, while acknowledging that they lost to the Hurricanes to open the season. The problem was process and being singled out by the ACC for Miami's sake: Notre Dame felt they took care of business as they needed to, and yet saw themselves slip down the rankings and be passed over by the committee despite a 10-game winning streak filled with dominant wins to close out the year.

"We made our case, we stated our point of view. But again if you’re us, we were told from day one of the rankings that we were in," Bevacqua said. "We were ninth and then all of a sudden we go play a game against Stanford — it felt like in the middle of the night — and we took care of business, and Alabama has a really tough game against an Auburn team that’s having a tough year, and we wake up on Tuesday and we fall below Alabama for the first time. And it was all about the fierce conversation between Notre Dame and Alabama, and I heard something to the effect that Alabama went for it on fourth down, so that made an impression. And just our heads were spinning, like where’s the logic, where’s the rationale, why are we being kind of punished, and the only ones that seem to be moving in the wrong direction. And yet winning, and having an unbelievably dominant end to the season."

The end result of this was that Notre Dame missed the CFP and then declined any possible bowl game invitation, ending their year to "focus on next season" while acknowledging that multiple player like Jeremiyah Love, Jadarian Price, Eli Raridon and Aamil Wagner might not have even participated in a bowl game, anyway. When Patrick stated that it "feels like a message being sent" with the decision to bow out, Bevacqua didn't mince words: "Well we’re not happy, that’s for sure."

FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt disagreed with Notre Dame's decision to pull out of potential bowl games, saying "you are better than this":

"Urban Meyer has talked about this … it's kind of like an event happens and then there's your response to the event and then that's going to equal the outcome. So Urban used to talk about E plus R equals O — Event plus Response equals the Outcome. In this case, I feel like that applies.

"I'm hesitating with using the word quit, but they're just going to artificially end their season and not go to a bowl game. I think that's the wrong decision. And I think that that decision was born out of an emotional reaction rather than a disciplined response."

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