At noon Sunday, 12 teams were selected to compete in the 2025 College Football Playoff – Notre Dame was not one of them. As ESPN talking-heads, the ACC and college football pundits around the country lauded the committee’s decision to leave the Irish out, a decades-old feeling reemerged in the hearts of Irish faithful: It’s us against the world.
Amid the injustice of the decision, the same tired calls have reappeared for Notre Dame to join a conference. All this would have been avoided, many said, if Notre Dame had played for a conference championship game.
Joining a conference would be a colossal mistake for Notre Dame. Despite the committee’s incompetence this year, the new playoff format favors the team remaining on its own. Notre Dame is now eligible for a bye in the top four spots, unlike last year. And starting in 2026, Notre Dame is guaranteed an automatic playoff berth if it finishes in the CFP top 12 – regardless of the outcome of the other college championship games. This is a format that no longer explicitly disadvantages the Irish for maintaining their independence.
More fundamentally, however, the conferences are emblematic of the same rot at the core of college football that is keeping Notre Dame out of the playoffs this year. The conferences are little more than conglomerates. They take money and TV rights away from individual teams, supplant regional rivalries with unreasonable long-distance schedules and vie endlessly for control over the playoffs.
This most recent intrusion into the heart of the college football tradition is especially egregious. The national championship should go to the best team in college football. For that to occur, the best teams must compete for the title. As long as conference winners retain automatic bids, this mission cannot fully be realized.
Even if the Irish did join a conference, where would they go? Joining the ACC, which has actively campaigned against a Notre Dame playoff berth for the past two months and did not even send its conference champion to the playoffs, would be nonsensical. Nevermind the fact that joining the ACC would entail a media partnership with ESPN, which profits from the farcical CFP rankings show and has spent the past two weeks perpetually arguing that Notre Dame should not be in the playoffs.
The committee’s ultimate decision was reasonable in some aspects, but entirely illogical in others, especially after Notre Dame was listed No. 10 in the penultimate ranking and every conference championship game over the weekend benefited the Irish. Notre Dame’s competitors for the final two spots, Miami and Alabama, did nothing to improve their records. The Hurricanes sat idle as No. 17 Virginia, and unranked Duke collided in the ACC championship game, while the Crimson Tide lost in convincing fashion to Georgia, a team Alabama had touted as its best win of the regular season.
A Boise State victory and a BYU loss in their respective conference championships buoyed the Irish as well, leading to the AllState Playoff predictor tabbing Notre Dame with a 95% chance to make the field. In fact, bettors gave the Irish the fifth-best odds of winning their first national championship since 1988.
The reaction to this unjust exclusion of Notre Dame should not be for the University to panic and give away the very thing that defines its identity and gives it control over our own destiny. Rather, Notre Dame should double down on its independence. The Irish were right not to play in a bowl game and legitimize the committee’s decision. And given the ACC’s smear campaign against Notre Dame, the team which drives revenue for the conference and gives it relevancy, athletic director Pete Bavacqua should consider abandoning the partnership agreement with the ACC and finding new partners.
If this weekend’s results teach us one thing, it is that it will always be Notre Dame against everybody else. The Irish should embrace this independent identity, refusing to legitimize a shameful ranking by playing in a bowl game and ending its partnership with a conference that disrespects them. What’s wrong with the conference system is what’s wrong with all of college football. Notre Dame should fight it, not give in to it. With this mindset, the Irish can maintain their dominant role for years to come and storm back next season with a vengeance.