Imagine the ACC with Notre Dame and Navy
Once upon a time, the Confidential tossed around the idea of Navy as a suitable replacement for Maryland location-wise and as a partner with Notre Dame as the 15th and 16th teams. Obviously, Notre Dame is not ready for a conference, but they might start inching closer if they are 11-1 and outside the playoffs. The loss of a 13th game hurt the Big XII last year and could hurt Notre Dame this year–even with a win over Stanford. While everyone thinks UConn as team #16, and the Confidential has always thought West Virginia made even better sense than UConn, Navy has its merits too.
While it is apples and oranges, just look at these conference lineups based on current records:
ACC North:
Notre Dame 10-1
Navy 9-1
Pitt 8-3
Miami 7-4
Louisville 6-5
Wake Forest 3-8
Syracuse 3-8
Boston College 3-8
ACC South:
Clemson 11-0
North Carolina 10-1
Florida State 9-2
NC State 7-4
Duke 6-5
Virginia Tech 5-6
Virginia 4-7
Georgia Tech 3-8
Play your division and 2-rotating crossovers for 9 conference games.
Notre Dame/Navy play anyway, so that just becomes a 6th conference game, leaving 3 OOC games for Notre Dame to schedule a B1G opponent, USC, and one more opponent.
Permanent Crossover Opponents: Do you really need them? Does Miami need that game against FSU that badly? FSU already has Florida. More than enough rivalry games there.
Sucks to be Wake Forest, as they are stuck outside of the South. Miami, also stuck outside of the South, belongs tethered with the other private schools (except Duke).
The Confidential 
You could do this with a 9 game conference schedule, though you’d need to guarantee a Miami-FSU game each year to keep that ESPN money flowing. Aside from that, I agree most would rather see WVU in the ACC over UConn & Navy.
ND fan here. I think that any possible playoff snub at 11-1 is not going to move the “abandon independence” meter much, if at all.
A snub at 12-0, multiple 11-1 snubs and a “conference champ only” requirement would go so.
Regarding scheduling, you left out the Stanford game, the Shamrock Series game and games scheduled against Texas, Georgia and others.
I don’t see any real benefit for ND football in the ACC.
Regarding the playoffs, FSU last year and Clemson this year had/have to go undefeated.
So, minimal gain for ND even in that area.
Why expand? And I thought N Dame was a member of the conference. When do we stop treating N. Dame like a prima donna and require a full football schedule of ACC games. They are no better than any other school. actually wish they would go away!! Tired of double standards!
For now, ND adds cache to the ACC and its bowl lineup. If the rest of the ACC can start rising up… then the balance between ND and ACC might be such that ND should join full-time.
I don’t think so:
http://www.si.com/college-football/2015/11/29/notre-dame-fighting-irish-college-football-playoff-stanford