Are we as sure as we think we are that Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua has filled his school's institutional diaper by carrying on about the Fighting Irish being excluded from the college football playoff? Or is this just college football fans, and mostly those from the lower right quadrant of the nation, shrieking in glee at said diaper and its owner?
We're not exactly sure, to be honest, although it says something about the tone of it all that the metaphorical diaper is a constant. Despite its ongoing consolidation into sprawling gigaconferences, college football has never been a more regional sport than it is now, and a large part of the nation that's still invested in the whole Ponzi scheme likes the fact that everyone involved is pantloading in a frantically public way. As big a deal as Notre Dame football is—and it is a big deal, if not quite as big a deal as it believes itself to be—this is more about the chance to giggle and gawk at an embarrassing public spectacle than it is anything to do with the game itself.
But here we are anyway, on Day 4 of a two-day story, with Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark chastising Bevacqua for complaining about ACC commissioner Jim Phillips' inertia re: the ACC social media team's frantic promotion for the playoff candidacy of full member Miami instead of part member Notre Dame. That's a lot to follow, a proper pigpile of socially arrested suits moaning and groaning about each other. They are upset because their entire system is a Jenga tower wrapped in money and coated in maple syrup; they are complaining because that's more or less their raison d'etre.
Notre Dame has always been an easy target for such fans and opponents because of the advantages it has blackjacked into being. Those include being an independent in the program's most lucrative sport and a conference member in all the others; having its own network; and the recent discovery that they can be grandfathered into the 2026 playoff simply by being ranked in the top 12 by the nitwit-powered playoff committee. Notre Dame is entitled because they are Notre Dame, but it is more salient in this case that the system has re-entitled them. As a result, Notre Dame when wronged is particularly squeally, and those who don't like them for those privileges (read: the rest of College Football America) will naturally be inclined to soak their feet in the bucket of Notre Dame's tears.
But if it were just that, we could all move on to some other seasonal gripe—the fact that inflatable front yard Santas are not only a thing but a thing that costs $200, maybe. It isn't just that, though. College football is no longer about either college or football. It's certainly not about the players, who used to be student-athletes but now are working their way toward the drinking-age hell of being employees. College football is about itself, and more specifically about the act of consuming itself—about being shouty about something or someone. We suspect that Bevacqua knows this in his way, just as the committee knew it in their context, and Lane Kiffin knew about it in his uniquely hyper-solipsistic way, and LSU knew it when it fired Brian Kelly, then unfired him so they could avoid paying him, then lost their interest in unfiring him when they found out they'd have to pay him anyway and fired him again. You can see this knowledge, which is cynical and sure and absolutely ice cold, in the way that coaches were being fired weekly for Snickers and giggles all season, and in USC and Michigan complaining that Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti is seeking out hedge fund operators to fuel college sports. Everyone knows their respective advantage and what they can get away with, and everyone is pressing their luck.
It's all adult-on-adult behavior, and the one thing youth culture has always gotten right is how utterly contemptible adults are when left to their own reflections. Commissioners? Athletic directors? Coaches? Hedge funds? How much closer to the bottom of the latrine are we this year than last?
Whatever that distance, this is what college football wants to be now, and so we must presume what it will continue to be. People even hate the comparatively charming presences of Tulane and James Madison in the playoff as the business' last offering to the 100-some-odd schools left out of the SEC/Big Ten appropriation of the levers of power. Those people will likely be proven right, if annoying, when Tulane gets boatraced (again) by the de-Kiffinized Ole Miss and JMU gets pounded by Oregon. Those adults will complain about the playoff format for five days while the Tulane and JMU coaches flit off to their next jobs, and then everyone will get back to the bidness of bidness.
With all that as the backdrop, Notre Dame re-galvanizing the industry's Pavlovian hate against itself may actually be brilliant if self-parodic theatre, a reminder that, even in this churning mosh pit of soul-deficient moneygrubbers, there is one thing they can all agree upon. We prefer to think, then, that Pete Bevacqua saw the business tearing itself apart and imposed the power incumbent in his office as Chief Petty Officer Of The U.S.S. Fighting Irish to remind everyone of the one thing they can all agree upon—hating Notre Dame for being so relentlessly, persistently and shamelessly Notre Dame. Bevacqua's sacrifice should be hailed as what it is, a brave act of falling on the grenade to save the rest of the platoon. The only real quibble we have is why anyone would bother to take one for this platoon, even or especially when it all just feels like friendly fire.
