On Tuesday, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua suggested that an apology from the ACC might not be enough to undo the “permanent damage” done between the conference and the Fighting Irish during the final month of the regular season.
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“I’d tell you at this point we haven’t really given that a ton of thought,” Bevacqua said. “Are we looking for an apology? Quite frankly, I don’t think an apology does anything or unwinds what has happened.”
“But at the right time we’ll sit down with the ACC leadership and I think hopefully have a frank, honest, hopefully a productive conversation. But I’ll tell you that time is not now.”
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On Sunday, the College Football Playoff selection committee bumped Miami ahead of Notre Dame.
Amid the fallout, Bevacqua took issue with how the ACC handled its social media campaign, promoting Miami and appearing to take shots at the Irish. ND competes in the ACC in 24 other sports and has an agreement with the conference to schedule football games.
Per Matt Fortuna and Pete Sampson, the ACC accidentally sent ND emails regarding the campaign to promote the Hurricanes.
“But I think it’s more complicated,” Fortuna said on “The Independent” podcast. “Everything about the social media campaign, etc., is true. From my understanding, the ACC was very sloppy with it.
“They accidentally CC’d Notre Dame on some of these conference-wide emails. That really rubbed Notre Dame folks the wrong way.”
“They did the old accidental reply-all thing,” Sampson said. “Not good.”
On Monday, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips claimed the conference didn’t suggest ND wasn’t a worthy candidate for the CFP. However, the ACC had an interest in advocating for its 17 football programs.
The University of Notre Dame is an incredibly valued member of the ACC, and there is tremendous respect and appreciation for the entire institution,” Phillips said.
“With that said, when it comes to football, we have a responsibility to support and advocate for all 17 of our football-playing member institutions, and I stand behind our conference efforts to do just that leading up to the College Football Playoff Committee selections on Sunday.”
It’s interesting that Notre Dame was included on those emails, seeing as Phillips’ argument was that the 17 football programs were treated differently than the Irish because they’re not a full participant in the conference for that sport.
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