Could Notre Dame reconsider football independence for better media deal?

The University of Notre Dame is seeking a major bump for its football media rights, according to a report from Front Office Sports.

The report from Amanda Christovich and Michael McCann said that the school is looking for anything in the realm between $65 million $75 million per year in its next deal. Its current pact with NBC, a broadcast partner since 1991, expires after the 2024 college football season. The writers, however, suggest that in order to triple their current deal, the Irish may have to join an athletic conference for all sports, including football.

Front Office Sports displayed the numbers of Notre Dame’s current packages versus what schools in the high-profile conferences would bring in over the next few years:

The Fighting Irish receive somewhere in the mid-$30 million range for overall rights fees: $22 million per year from their NBC football-only contract, as well as about $11 million annually from the ACC, in which the Irish compete for all other sports. 

The Big Ten’s new mid-$7 billion, seven-year deal with NBC, Fox Sports, and CBS Sports will eventually dish out up to $90 million to schools like Ohio State and Michigan. That gives them a big financial advantage over the Irish.

Notre Dame’s independence was once its primary advantage for recruitment and media coverage. Being able to build its own schedule year after year against just about any college it wanted granted the school a national profile that its competitors couldn’t match. Notre Dame has been able to parlay that independence through the BCS and now College Football Playoff eras, where it doesn’t need to win a conference for a chance to play for the national championship.

However, the Power Five conferences — two of them, in particular — are among the biggest moneymakers in all of sports. Once synonymous with CBS, the SEC bolted its longtime partner for a 10-year, $3 billion deal with Disney (ESPN/ABC) that goes into effect in 2024. CBS, along with NBC and Fox, reloaded with a mammoth seven-year, $7 billion deal for the Big Ten that officially kicks off this weekend. The money has grown so much that even a lower-tiered school in those conferences bring in more revenue than a pedigree program like Notre Dame.

Notre Dame isn’t exactly poor, though when you’re talking about a difference between $33 million and $90 million, the gulf is fairly wide. Maintaining its independence would only seem worthwhile if the Fighting Irish were a dynastic power as Alabama has been under Nick Saban, a perennial contender like Clemson or just coming off of back-to-back titles like Georgia will be this fall. The school isn’t consistently in the national title mix, but if it wants to reap the financial rewards that even Rutgers (far from a football powerhouse) gets from the Big Ten, it may have to reconsider its independence.