Notre Dame Director of Athletics, Pete of Aqua, noted that on Sunday, Marcus Freeman's football team gathered, expecting to see if they were going to be the ninth or tenth seed in the college football playoff.

Instead, they had the rug pulled out from under him. His words were shocked and mystified that the fighting Irish were left out of the 2025 college

football playoff. I'm Tim O'Malley, joined by Drew Bentock of Irish Illustrated, and this episode

of Irish Illustrated Incident Analysis is brought to you by the RV Manufactured Housing Hall of Fame

in the Northern Indiana event center in Elkhart, Indiana. Drew, there was a lot of discussion today

about a strained relationship with the ACC. He said it is not

absolutely irreparable, but it is strained, and he repeated the word strained again. Yes, and he's

been on a little bit of a media campaign the last few days going on the Dan Patrick show is where he

kind of dropped that. It's been permanent damage to the relationship, and today he cited specifically

the three-and-a and a half week social media

campaign by the ACC. He mentioned that he thought when he first saw a tweet referencing the, I think

it was like the blind resume test between Notre Dame and Miami, that he thought maybe somebody

on the social media department had gone rogue and that he was expecting a call or them to change it up and then

he said it just continued and he said by the end he did have a call with ac c commissioner jim phillips about a

week ago he wouldn't go into details but he said he made it very clear what nordium stance is and that

as you said that relationship is strained and he reiterated often that miami belonged to the college football playoff, Alabama, and Notre Dame belong in the college football playoff. You could argue Texas and Vanderbilt. He omitted BYU, but he meant BYU as well belong in the college football playoff. That was not his point. The point was he felt they had, going into this, and he was asked directly, they had a fantastic partnership with the ACC, and he started to talk about everything that Notre Dame brings in football to the ACC.

The ACC sells out his words approximately 23% of their games.

When Notre Dame is there, they sell out approximately 90% of their games.

So he felt that although they provide an avenue for Notre Dame to have a more balance or a schedule they can balance out ahead of time and a path to the college football playoff, Notre Dame provides plenty for the ACC too. And it was, that is something that I feel when he says it's not irreparable, but it's strained. I feel that it was just a, all of a sudden there was a shot at Notre Dame, and he was stunned by that. Right. And he brought up too, like we wouldn't take

shots at the NBC. Like that's one of our most important partners. We're outside of the ACC's 17 members

were their most important partnership. We're in 24 different sports. We have the contract for football

you mentioned, and he just didn't understand the logic.

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