Checking in with our fledgling weekend piece, Saturday Smugness, and we take on Notre Dame football, which recently made news for getting shafted by the College Football Playoff, rightfully rejecting a bowl invite thereafter, and now dogging its 90-year series with the USC Trojans. More than a year ago we proposed a radical solution for what ails this hallowed program: join the new version of the Pac-12.

It was about 35 years ago when the Fighting Irish shocked the rest of the college football world by signing its own private television deal with NBC Sports, since Notre Dame had a unique following for most of the twentieth century. This financial edge meant great things for the Irish program, but the school’s unwillingness to join a conference over the decades has come full circle now to bite it in the proverbial ass.

The solution, once again, is not the B1G—which made overtures to Notre Dame for years—or the ACC, which the Fighting Irish participate in for other sports while also playing a big slate of opponents in football. The answer is still the new version of the Pac-12, or whatever it ends up getting called. If the Domers want to be relevant going forward, they need to be in a conference they can dominate. Voila!

As the CFP website states, “The 12 participating teams will be the five conference champions ranked highest by the CFP selection committee, plus the next seven highest-ranked schools.” With carefully selected out of conference opponents, the Fighting Irish could easily run the table and always be one of those high-ranking league champs—where the top four get first-round byes. It’s an “easier” pathway to CFP glory.

The longer Notre Dame insists on its stubborn independence, the more the CFP is going to marginalize the Irish if it can, like it did this year. Yet if the school joins a conference, there’s no legit way to exclude it from the playoff. Yes, Notre Dame may not take home as much money directly from the process, having to share with conference colleagues, but the Fighting Irish will more than make up for that in merchandise sales.

With all due respect to the eight football schools in the new Pac-X, Notre Dame would dominate this conference for the foreseeable future, elevate the conference itself in stature, and provide each member school with a lot more than it has now—including the Irish, as noted above. Time’s a-wastin’ for the university to make the move, and this one makes the most sense: it’s accessible and smaller. Bingo.

We’ve said our piece here; we will let the topic now rest in peace.