As the ACC’s growing financial gap with the Big Ten and SEC loomed in 2017, one athletic director threw out an idea to address it.What about another round of conference realignment, like adding Texas?“Might force ND to do the same?” then-Florida State AD Stan Wilcox wrote.Although Notre Dame has long cherished its football independence, the Irish were entering the fourth season of their scheduling arrangement with the ACC. It was reasonable to wonder whether Notre Dame would expand its partial ACC membership into a complete affiliation that would boost the league’s prestige, buoy the bottom line and, perhaps, stave off any existential threats.The response from Duke’s then-AD (and former Notre Dame AD) Kevin White: “Never say never.”Little has changed about the Irish’s liminal status with the league since that exchange, which was obtained by The Athletic through an open records request.At best, the dynamic remains a little awkward. Football coaches have been grumbling that the Irish should “join a conference” since the scheduling deal was announced in 2012. Administrators will gush about everything Notre Dame adds while, in the same breath, acknowledging the sweetheart deal the ACC had to accept to make it happen.At worst, the unique relationship seems like a forced marriage of convenience with an expiration date.Notre Dame doesn't need to join a conference, for nowPete SampsonIt’s hard to come back from a phrase like “permanent damage,” which is how Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua described the union after the ACC stumped for Miami to make the College Football Playoff over Notre Dame last December. Then the Irish skipped bowl season entirely, passing on one of the ACC’s bids. While the Big 12 fined Iowa State and Kansas State $250,000 for turning down bowl bids, Notre Dame faced no such financial penalty.Whatever tension surrounds the Notre Dame-ACC dynamic, the partnership still feels more like a solution than a problem. The Athletic spoke with a dozen people in and around the ACC and Notre Dame; they were unanimous that the arrangement, while imperfect, continues to help both entities more than it hurts them.Notre Dame helped the ACC launch its own network and serves as a ticket office and TV ratings cheat code. In exchange, the Irish have received a football scheduling inventory boost and a stable home for other championship-caliber programs like men’s lacrosse and women’s basketball. The deal has formed the backdrop for memorable football moments on both sides; Clemson’s “Bring Your Own Guts” win in a monsoon kickstarted Dabo Swinney’s dynasty in 2015, just as Marcus Freeman got his footing with the Irish by stomping Swinney’s Tigers seven years later.“To me, this is a mutually beneficial relationship,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “I would say it has not felt any different from the day I walked into this job five and a half years ago. It just hasn’t.”So was Notre Dame’s broadside of the ACC actually just another step in a functional partnership rather than the foundational crack it appeared to be?When new athletic directors are hired, the ACC brings them to its conference offices in Charlotte for an onboarding presentation delivered by Phillips. Incoming athletic directors Steve Newmark (North Carolina) and Bryan Blair (Syracuse) visited this spring.The PowerPoint includes a section on the Irish. Phillips, a Notre Dame external affairs administrator from 2000-04, explains why his former employer partners with his current one. When the deal was struck more than a decade earlier, conferences were still bound by geography, the Bowl Championship Series existed, bowl affiliations mattered and players weren’t getting paid above the table. Those have all changed, but other key factors haven’t.“To me, it’s just part of, within any organization or profession, it is always important to educate where it’s been, where it is going, why decisions were made,” Phillips said. “I don’t assume anyone knows what that relationship is to the degree that maybe you do know once you’re here in the conference.”Phillips doesn’t limit the reminders to PowerPoint. When the Notre Dame agreement became a gossipy talking point at ACC meetings in May, the commissioner rallied membership to fall in line with a direct address during a closed-door meeting.Notre Dame and the ACC still mesh academically. The ACC boasts seven private schools (Notre Dame would be the eighth). The other power conferences have six total. Of the ACC’s 18 members (including the Irish outside of football), 16 are ranked among the nation’s 75 schools by U.S. News & World Report. Seven join Notre Dame in the top 40. Every school but Wake Forest is classified as a top-tier research institution.The Irish benefit from access to Power 4 opponents in October and November while everyone else is in conference play. That point seems more critical now for two reasons: All major conferences have added a ninth league game, providing fewer openings for an independent opponent, and big-name programs are rethinking aggressive approaches to nonconference scheduling. Notre Dame lost its rivalry with USC when the Trojans backed out amid Big Ten scheduling concerns.Notably, ACC coaches don’t get the same presentation, which is perhaps why Swinney is more likely to riff on Notre Dame’s “money machine in the backyard” than Clemson athletic director Graham Neff. Same goes for Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi, whose boss, Allen Greene, is one of five Notre Dame alumni to lead ACC athletic departments last season, including Bevacqua. Virginia Tech just hired Notre Dame alumnus Brian White, who might be asked about Irish independence by new coach James Franklin (who said that “everybody should be in a conference” while sitting next to Freeman before the January 2025 Orange Bowl).Miami’s dramatic win over Notre Dame last August helped vault it over the Irish in the final CFP rankings in December. (Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)When the angst over Notre Dame’s new CFP selection criteria — the Irish will get an automatic bid with a top-12 ranking — spilled into the open in December, the rule change was a revelation for some coaches but old news for ADs. Notre Dame skipping bowl season irked coaches but didn’t move many athletic directors.