Miami is starting to sound a lot like Notre Dame.
That’s the twist at the center of a messy college football landscape, where the old advice - just join a conference - no longer sounds quite so simple. Miami president Joe Echevarria recently laid out the Hurricanes’ thinking to Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger, and the underlying message was clear: if the money keeps tilting the wrong way, schools outside the top tier are going to keep looking for escape routes.
The Protect College Sports Act is supposed to bring some order to the chaos. One provision, though, has Miami and several other ACC programs pushing back hard. They don’t want any restriction on conference expansion, because the long game is obvious: a path to the SEC or Big Ten, the two leagues pulling in the biggest TV money and positioned to cash in again when those deals come back up.
That’s part of why Notre Dame and UCONN sit in a different spot. They aren’t directly affected by the proposed expansion rules because they’re already independent, which gives them a head start if this new era opens the door to conference movement.
Echevarria didn’t hide Miami’s frustration with where it sits in the pecking order.
"We are proud members of the ACC. If the economics were even, we wouldn't be having any of these conversations," Echevarria told Dellenger.
"Thing is, we sit in the second tier. It's a reason we don't get a vote on the 24-team playoff and the Big Ten and SEC do."
That imbalance is exactly why the Hurricanes could end up staring at the same path Notre Dame has long owned. Dellenger reported that if the PCSA includes a rule requiring a school to be independent for three years before it can join a conference, Miami has already explored ways to make that kind of move workable, including possible media partners such as Amazon.
Echevarria stopped short of saying the Hurricanes would definitely go that route if the bill passes. But he didn’t shut the door, either.
"If we have to go independent, I like our chances because we are a national brand," he says. "I wouldn't like to do that because scheduling [other sports] is really tough. It's great for football but what about track, volleyball and the golf team?"
That’s where Notre Dame’s setup looks especially smart in hindsight. The Fighting Irish are independent in football, but they’ve been able to keep most of their other sports in the ACC. According to the source reporting, that arrangement came together after Notre Dame realized it needed conference support for its non-revenue programs and the ACC was glad to have the brand attached to it.
Whether Miami could pull off a similar split is another matter. Even if the PCSA would technically allow football independence while staying in the ACC for other sports, the conference is unlikely to welcome Miami into that arrangement.
For now, everything hinges on whether the PCSA passes and what the final rules actually say. Until then, Miami’s future - and how much of Notre Dame’s model it can realistically copy - stays up in the air.
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Notre Dame Just Proved Again How Massive Its National Pull Is
Notre Dame once again showed why it remains one of the sports biggest national draws, landing in the middle of another loaded Week 7 viewership slate. While Ohio State against Indiana topped the week on FOX, the Irishs game against BYU was right behind it on ABC, pulling 9.2 million viewers and holding off the rest of a crowded national window that featured high-profile matchups across the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12.
For a program that already travels well in any broadcast slot, numbers like that only reinforce how broad the interest remains every time Notre Dame is on a national stage. Even with Alabama-Tennessee leading the SECs week at 8.1 million viewers, the Irish were still squarely among the biggest attractions in college football, a reminder that their pull extends far beyond conference lines and into the center of the sports weekly TV conversation. [Read more 🡒]