ACC Football: Top 5 expansion candidates for the conference

Notre Dame has long been courted by several conferences, and the ACC is definitely on that list. The league signed an extension of their limited-membership deal with the Fighting Irish before the 2017 season, ensuring that each their current and future members get to play against the historic powerhouse every few years.

But the ACC would be able to boost their television negotiating power significantly if they locked in Notre Dame as one of their full members. Commanding $15 million annually on its own in its most recent NBC deal, the Fighting Irish no longer holds a strategic advantage over conference members.

Notre Dame joining the ACC would prove mutually beneficial for both school and conference. The union would integrate the Irish more fully into southern recruiting hotbeds. It would also make for interesting television negotiations, as it could open the doors for NBC to lock in the rights to ACC football after a 25-year relationship with Notre Dame.

The hard part, of course, is convincing Notre Dame to give up an independence that has been deliberately maintained over the decades. The ACC already has the Irish locked partially up. Now all they would need to do is close the deal completely, though that last dash of independence is going to be hard to break for as long as it continues to exist.