ACC commissioner Jim Phillips kept it civil in a statement reacting to Notre Dame’s verbal rampage over their snubbing from the College Football Playoff.
Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua appeared on several sports talk shows on Monday, which included the “Dan Patrick Show,” where he claimed that the ACC had done “permanent damage” to its relationship with the school.
Bevacqua took issue with the fact that the conference, and its social media and television network, had been pushing Miami’s CFP candidacy and criticizing Notre Dame.
Notre Dame is a conference member of the ACC in 24 other sports except football and Phillips tried to cool down the rhetoric on Monday in what appeared to be a response to Bevacqua.
“The University of Notre Dame is an incredibly valued member of the ACC and there is tremendous respect and appreciation for the entire institution,” Phillips said in a statement. “With that said, when it comes to football, we have a responsibility to support and advocate for all 17 of our football-playing member institutions, and I stand behind our conference efforts to do just that leading up to the College Football Playoff Committee selections on Sunday.
“At no time was it suggested by the ACC that Notre Dame was not a worthy candidate for inclusion in the field. We are thrilled for the University of Miami while also understanding and appreciating the significant disappointment of the Notre Dame players, coaches and program.”
The ACC did post to X several comments in which it compared Notre Dame and Miami blindly before campaigning for Miami – a full conference member – and the ACC Network ran reruns of the Notre Dame-Miami game — which the Hurricanes won — from earlier this year 13 times.
It’s unclear what impact that truly had on the selection committee’s decision-making, but it was enough to enrage Notre Dame’s administration.
Bevacqua made sure to note that his issue was not with Miami, which did make the College Football Playoff, but rather the conference.
“We didn’t appreciate the fact that we were singled out repeatedly and compared to Miami,” Bevacqua said. “Not by Miami. Miami has every right to do that. But it raised a lot of eyebrows here that the conference was taking shots at us. And that’s just not something we chose to do. We wouldn’t choose to do that in the future, and people might disagree with us, but that’s just not something that we’d be comfortable with.”
