Notre Dame’s extremely light reaction to the ACC news seems strange

The surprising news on Wednesday about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish joining the ACC in football for the 2020 season seemingly came out of nowhere. Sure, it’s news that has been primed for weeks, but the general consensus was that the ACC would wait (along with the SEC and Big 12) for the NCAA Board of Governors to release their info on Tuesday next week. So, yeah, when it was the conference that released the information and not leaked news via the media — it hit different.

Immediately the internet was injected with a brand new round of reactions, takes, and delicious hot takes. Some fans (and media members) failed to fully read or fully comprehend what the agreement really is and how it will come about.

So let’s talk about a few of those points and a few other things as well.

NOTRE DAME’S REACTION

It took Notre Dame almost 4 hours to publicly acknowledge the news. In today’s world, that’s absolutely crazy. The ACC released the announcement at 4:28 PM and Notre Dame finally responded at 8:32 PM with a single tweet from the PR account.

I think we can safely assume that Notre Dame wasn’t fully aware about the announcement timing, and their lack of engagement also suggests they don’t have the answers yet. This is a monumental thing for Notre Dame, and for college football — and here we are almost 24 hours later and this is still all we have.

Seems strange.

ALL-ACC TEAM

Since Notre Dame is eligible to play in the conference championship game, I think it’s fair to say that the Irish will be eligible for ALL-ACC honors at the end of the season. It’s hard to say how that would all go down, but if the sacred cow of championships and TV money are shared — this should fall right in line.

MORE DOUGH

The initial responses about Notre Dame’s TV money from NBC being a “major concession” put me into rage mode last night. I believe that Jude and I accurately depicted how this really works in the OFD Podcast, and in the end... Notre Dame makes more money. How this was overlooked by some in the media makes me wonder how drunk they really were before dinner on a Wednesday.

THE NAVY PROBLEM

What Notre Dame does — or is able to do — with the Navy Midshipmen on the schedule is perhaps the biggest reason for the delayed response from the Irish. Given the guidelines that the ACC put forward, Navy would have to play Notre Dame inside Notre Dame Stadium. There are no exact dates for the ACC opponents on ND’s schedule now so...

• When can they play?
• Will this become a game on NBC, or will ESPN be allowed to broadcast the game?
• The Western Michigan Broncos probably won’t have the same protocols as the ACC for COVID-19, and the Arkansas Razorbacks may make other plans.

I think we should expect any response from ND other than the 2 sentence tweet to have all of this hammered out — but who knows. It’s not as simple as it appears on the surface.