Notre Dame football's status as an independent gets called into question more every year. It genuinely upsets a lot of college football fans. As of right now, it doesn't seem like Notre Dame is that close to joining a conference in football, but it's possible that they will eventually be forced into joining one.
If/when the time comes when Notre Dame joins a conference, it's important they force these conferences to improve before they do because as it currently stands, conferences in college football are completely broken.
There are so many teams in each conference that top teams in them don't even always play each other so who gets in to the conference championship game and who doesn't comes down to arbitrary non-exciting tiebreakers and that's not even mentioning the fact that the majority of CFB fans don't even want to see their teams playing in the conference championship game in the first place due to it's risk.
People think Notre Dame should be forced to engage with a system that they themselves don't even like.
The ACC does not deserve Notre Dame yet
The ACC is a complete circus at the moment. The conference is not structured in a way that makes sense. This past season, Miami was by far the best team in the conference. There aren't many who would debate that, and yet they didn't even play in the ACC championship game. They finished third in the standings behind 10-2 Virginia and 7-5 Duke.
A 5-loss Duke team made a power conference championship game it shouldn't have and hilariously ended up winning it. That Blue Devils team was so unimpressive and undeserving of the top spot in a major conference, the CFP committee didn't even bother putting them in the playoff and put a second group of 5 conference team in instead.
The ACC's response to their best team by far not making their championship game? They will now have most ACC teams play 9 conference games, while five teams only play 8 conference games. Surely nothing controversial will happen if say Miami is 8-1 in conference play, and Clemson is only 7-1 because they just played one less game, right?
2026 Conference Opponents following the updated schedule model.
— ACC Football (@ACCFootball) December 16, 2025
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If Notre Dame is going to join the ACC and break over 100 years of tradition that directly ties back to what they represent and the discrimination them and their students faced for decades in the early 20th century from other programs around the country, than they better at least make sure the conference they join has a competent structure in place.
Maybe CFB needs divisions back in conferences. Maybe it need a mini 4-team conference playoff to accommodate the immense size of the current conferences. There has to be a solution that equals fairness and the best teams actually playing in the championship game and claiming the conference crown. The Irish shouldn't touch the ACC with a 10 foot pole until those solutions are found and implemented.
If Notre Dame joined they would not struggle to win the ACC
Some Fighting Irish haters say that Notre Dame is afraid of joining a conference. That is simply a false narrative not even remotely based in fact. The fact of the matter is that the ACC gives no reason for Notre Dame to be afraid of it.
With the decline of Clemson, the ACC has fallen into the pits of dispair. A controversial inclusion of Miami and a good run by them may make that statement seem crazy, but outside of Miami this past season, who in the ACC is even remotely threatening to Notre Dame?
In the five non-Miami ACC games Notre Dame played this past season only one team reached 20+ points and only a single team held the Irish to under 30 points. The Miami game was freshman QB CJ Carr's first ever start, it was on the road, against a 500th year QB, and it was only a 3 point game.
If, hypothetically, Notre Dame was in the ACC last year and the ACC Championship Game was them versus Miami, it's not unreasonable to say Notre Dame had an extremely good chance of winning the conference this year.
Notre Dame would almost certainly never struggle to contend for the ACC and would win it more times than they lost it with the occasional exception of a dynasty-like run such as Clemson in the late 2010s to early 2020s.