I believe NBC will try and extend the contract and the two parties might already be in negotiations to do that.
They had a 5 year contract that ran from 2011-2015 and announced it was extended 10 years (to 2025) in April of 2013. These things typically are done years in advance.
Ratings haven’t been great (though I am sure they were last night) but NBC doesn’t have much football to show and I think they will fight to try and retain ND football. They have to be worried about the decision to join the ACC for football for one season.
As a somewhat objective observer, it would seem to me that ND has a better chance to win the NC playing in the ACC conference than playing an independent schedule outside it. It has really hard to build a schedule as an independent that gives you byes when you need them, gives you the proper mix of tough and manageable games, etc. ND gets something close to an ideal schedule each year if they played in the ACC. Very much like Clemson already enjoys. Lots of games against good to very good programs but not too good, if you get my drift.
The ACC really needs a second team at or near the level of Clemson. You need a marquee game to build the conference schedule around. Clemson-ND is just as compelling as Georgia-Alabama, OSU-Michigan and it is something the conference has been missing since FSU and Miami have become mediocre.
I think 1+1 = 3 sometimes and this is one of those times. I understand ND would be giving up years of tradition and would not travel as much across the country. But maybe that travel is one of the reasons ND football has struggled to contend for NCs for a while now. Getting on a level playing field with other football powers is something ND might want to think about.
For the record, if they were to join, I would expect that the ACC would not act on adding a 16th member for a while. It is probably worth noting that the B12 GOR expires on June 30th, 2025. The same year ND’s contract with NBC ends. Funny how that works out.
The Chairman of NBC Sports and the man tasked with managing their media rights, is Pete Bevacqua. He is an ND Alum and a former walk-on during the Lou Holtz regime. He is en enormous ND person (watches every game etc.) and has been since he graduated 25 years ago.
I think the idea that ND home games are somehow NOT going to be played on NBC should be labeled an extreme long shot.
That said, I see nothing that would preclude ND or the ACC from having 6-7 conference games (aka ND home games) per year televised/covered on NBC. That is essentially what is happening this year. And a significant percentage of ND’s rights should be shared with the remaining 14-15 ACC schools.
As part of this, I could also conceivably see the Level 3/RSN games being televised covered on another NBC property, such at NBCSN and/or their new streaming service, Peacock. Both channels could use a programming boost.
ESPN would them have the rights to all ND road games against ACC conference foes. That is 4-5 games per season and Disney would and should be elated with this arrangement, as they’d essentially be a half rightsholder for ND football.
Remember, the Big10 has arrangements with both FOX and ABC/ESPN. That’s worked out swimmingly for them.
Bottom line, there are a myriad of possibilities or ACC football in the coming decade. Almost all of them are very good for the conference and Syracuse Athletics.
(One thing to acknowledge is that NBC is going to have to significantly increase its rights fees to keep the NFL or Sunday Night Football. That change, which I estimate will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, may affect many of the notions I spelled out above. But football is certainly television gold and the the more one owns, the more the ratings seem to follow)
