![]() ![]() In the past, Swarbrick has said Notre Dame would make more money off media rights as a full member of the ACC, which paid Notre Dame $17 million last year as a partial member. The maneuvering of the Big Ten and SEC has escalated Notre Dame’s cost of independence. “And it’s the money.” The price of independence “When I use the phrase ‘committed media partner,’ I was always intending to communicate financially too,” Swarbrick said. (It hit pause on talks until Bevacqua begins his new job later this month in advance of Swarbrick’s departure next spring.) Sources on both sides have struggled to envision a scenario in which a deal doesn’t get done after Notre Dame entered an early negotiating window with NBC when the Big Ten deal triggered a clause in the contract. If the investment in Big Ten football didn’t tip NBC’s hand about going big into college football, Notre Dame’s hiring of NBC Sports chairman and alumnus Pete Bevacqua to replace the retiring Swarbrick would have. And Notre Dame can’t pay bills with the prestige or exposure that comes from an NBC contract if renewed. Check those three boxes, and Notre Dame could afford to pay the independent tax that comes with eschewing conference membership, even if that meant making less from media rights than Purdue or Vanderbilt.īut yesterday’s price is not today’s price. (Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)įor most of the past decade, Notre Dame maintaining independence came down to three things: a broadcast partner for football, a home for its Olympic sports and access to the national championship, whether that was the BCS, the four-team College Football Playoff or the 12-team iteration Swarbrick helped design. The last NBC deal was signed after Notre Dame’s perfect 2012 regular season. How much television money would it take for Notre Dame to be able to afford independence while also making sure NBC could afford Notre Dame? It’s an answer that impacts not just Notre Dame, but virtually the entire sport. If geography drove the last round of realignment, now brand strength pays the bills.Īnd that leads Notre Dame and NBC to a different kind of negotiation, one that’s already begun. Yet, economic forces have changed in the past decade. What has been good for school has been good for network. The true value of the Notre Dame-NBC contract has always been its partnership. “They always talked about the brands that they worked with: the Olympics, the NFL, Notre Dame. “It became apparent to me how they viewed Notre Dame and how important it was to them and how much they valued it,” said athletic director Jack Swarbrick. The new deal, believed to be in the neighborhood of $25 million annually, was a market codifier, a means for Notre Dame to hold serve. That first deal was a market disruptor, a path for Notre Dame to charge ahead. ![]() The 10-year extension through the 2025 season was a departure from the five-year deals the school and network had matter-of-factly signed since Notre Dame forced the entire sport to rethink media rights when it quit the College Football Association in 1991 for a reported $38 million contract with NBC. The school had also finished its shrewd move to the ACC, taking the football program there part-time and just about everything else there in full amid a series of moves by the Big Ten, ACC, Big East and others.Īnd so NBC re-signed Notre Dame on April 18, 2013, in the best of times, dropping the news during the Blue-Gold Game as the late Louis Nix scored on a quarterback sneak.
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