Do the math. Notre Dame's media contract is projected to be around $25 million/yr for ND, and ND splits it with the teams that play at ND. That's $50 million for 8 home games on average. Divide $50 million by 8, and then multiply it by 11 (9 ACC games and 2 of the 3 OOC games). That equals $68.75 million. Assume that division championship games make roughly twice as much as regular season games, and assume that ND will make one 50% of the time (and that is low balling it). That means that ND's contribution to their Division Championship game would be $3,125,062.5 million/yr. Assume that the conference championship game is worth roughly 3 regular season games, and ND will make it roughly 33.34% of the time (they will win the dividion championship game 2/3 of the time that they play in it). This means that their contribution to the media value of that game would be $3,125,062.50. Assume that ND's non-football sports are worth $5 million/yr (this is slightly above what non-fball nBE teams were projected to make, which is fair, bc ND has the best non-football sports in the BIG EAST). That works out to be $80 million dollars of added value in TV revenue from ND alone. Add in $20 million from a Navy/GU combo [this is even low balling it, because Navy football and GU basketball are two of the top media-value programs left in the nBE]. That's a combined increase of $100 million in media revenue alone. Throw in money from current ACC teams for the two extra division championship games, which is roughly $10 million. Throw in increases due to synergies, like sandwiching ND games between ACC games to increase overall viewership of all the games (i.e. have ND's next conference adversary play the game immediately after the ND game, so that the ND fans watch it to scout them out, and the other team's fans would watch ND to scout them out) and increased bargaining power, and it is easily $6 million a team, plus money from increases in attendance, especially when the retained media rights for individual schools are considered. (It's over $4.5 million/school/year before attendance, synergies, retained media rights, and increases in bargaining leverage are considered)
It has taken over 25 years for the ACC to convince ND to move from around 3 ACC teams a year (usually Miami, BC, and Pitt) to the current 5 games/yr, and adding each game to ND's schedule gets progressively harder, because the low hanging fruit is removed. How long do you think it will take to convince ND that playing UCONN every year is a good idea, and do you want to wait that long to see the increase in payouts?
