What you persist in missing is that (A) The CFB football world that ND hoped to protect for itself with independence is dead and buried; (B) The demi-godlike power of multi-billionaire corporations is inextricably bound to all conference realignment, and it would just as soon steamroll everyone and everything that ND assumes is what it is preserving as bother swerving ever so slightly to avoid the destruction; (C) Acting always for self and self alone guarantees that when the time comes that you are in need of allies, you are unlikely to find any that are true friends; (D) As Jack Swarbrick has boasted, the now 30 years of conference realignment was actually started by ND getting an independent TV deal - that means that all the casualties of conference realignment have ND to blame for the process; (E) This most recent move certainly will spur the Big Ten and Fox to react, and if the SEC decides to war against the BT's reaction, then the end game for an ND that has remained not a full member of ACC football will be either join the SEC or the BT (the only 2 Major conferences by that point) or else accept reduced status; () ND long has expressed its frustration that changes in Major CFB have homogenized things so that smaller schools and private schools have either been dropped or else barely hang on. The ACC is the only Major conference with multiple private schools and smaller state schools.
But ACC fans still want ND to do what it doesn't want to do at all, and for the lowest possible price.
To me, that is arrogance.
This is what I keep seeing:
"I don't like the status quo so I demand that ND jettison independence, do it right now and take less money for it against its best interests because I say so and because it will help the school I root for."
Look, it seems inevitable to me that two super conferences will form and that ND will ultimately have to join one, no matter what.
Everything else seems to be re-arranging deck chairs until that inevitable day.
So, the best idea for ND seems to be for football to remain independent, to ride it out, to make sure ND is in its strongest and most flexible position, then pick the best one of the super conferences, not join the current ACC in football (especially not right now for half the payout and be locked into an even longer GOR).
I am sorry that is an unpopular opinion, but the ACC needs to do a better job than it has been doing, not ask ND to give up things to save it.
I strongly believe that neither Syracuse nor North Carolina nor any other school would do what you are asking if it were in ND's place.
The ACC needs to get creative. Convince Southern Cal, Stanford, Navy and two other schools to join it with ND, become a true coast to coast national conference, then get ESPN to agree that if ND joins, the payout will equal or be very close to SEC and Big Ten money.
I think that this is the job of the ACC to put together, not ND's job.
To me, that should be the pathway to getting ND to jettison independence, not to say we are tired of the status quo and that ND needs to do this to "save" the ACC from itself or we will be mad at you.
Only then can ND and the ACC have a real business discussion about ND dumping independence and joining the ACC.