http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/sports/ncaafootball/in-the-acc-the-irish-go-far-afield.html 2014-09-28 04:31:47 In the A.C.C., the Irish Go Far Afield Notre Dame’s hectic travel schedule helps it retain the higher national profile it has had as an independent. === EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — A typical college football regular season is 12 games, with most of the bigger programs having figured out a way to have seven home games. But Jack Swarbrick, The scheduling quirk coincides with the season in which Notre Dame, which has long maintained its independent status in football, will begin its quasi membership in the Atlantic Coast Conference. As part of an agreement reached in 2012, when Notre Dame joined the A.C.C. in all sports except football and hockey, Notre Dame will play five games against A.C.C. opponents per season through 2026. The Irish met their first A.C.C. opponent of the season Saturday, facing Syracuse at MetLife Stadium. It was a neutral site, but the Orange were considered the home team. It was a microcosm of the scheduling challenges Notre Dame will face as it settles down, partly, in the A.C.C., while maintaining a rigorous set of games across the country. The Irish see a travel-heavy slate as essential to cultivating the national fan base and recruiting footprint necessary for sustaining their status as a highly competitive independent program. They use a number of tools to accomplish this. The university’s annual Shamrock Series effectively provides a seventh home game, even though the games are played at sites all over the map. Past iterations have been played in San Antonio and Chicago, and next year’s game against Boston College will be played at Fenway Park. In November, Notre Dame will play an away game against Navy at FedEx Field in Landover, Md. Similarly, its away game next year against Temple will be played at the Philadelphia Eagles’ home, Lincoln Financial Field. The larger N.F.L. stadiums should allow Notre Dame more tickets to sell than a true away game would; the university sold about 13,000 tickets to Saturday’s game against Syracuse, where a typical away game might result in about 5,000 tickets. Its annual rivalry games with Southern California and Stanford guarantee it one contest per year in the recruiting hotbed of California. It also has home-and-homes scheduled with Texas and Georgia. The Irish have even gone global. Two seasons ago, Navy’s home game against Notre Dame took place in Dublin, in front of a crowd that might have been expected to root for the team called the Fighting Irish. Saturday night’s game, part of the New York College Classic, a series of home-and-homes between Syracuse and Notre Dame, was grandfathered in as part of the Irish’s A.C.C. commitment, according to a Notre Dame representative. Recent realignments resulted in five major football conferences and led Notre Dame to feel that it needed to join the A.C.C. as a full member for most sports and as a part-time member for football to ensure strong schedules and bowl access. The A.C.C. was unwilling to strike the deal without the five-game-per-season commitment, according to A.C.C. Commissioner John Swofford. (Notre Dame will play four A.C.C. games this season and six next season.) Swarbrick said that the A.C.C. deal was “the vehicle that allows us to maintain football independence.” Swofford called the Notre Dame-A.C.C. pact a “win-win.” “It gives Notre Dame a home for all of its sports, and yet allows them the opportunity to maintain their independent status in football,” he said. Swofford called Notre Dame a good fit, noting that with Boston College, Duke, Miami, Syracuse and Wake Forest, the A.C.C. already had more private universities, like Notre Dame, as members than the four other so-called Big 5 conferences combined. The A.C.C.’s broader conference base, which also includes universities in Florida, Kentucky, New York and Massachusetts, allows Notre Dame to travel farther from its South Bend, Ind., campus as it reaps the perks of conference membership, while retaining its independent tag. One such perk, according to Swarbrick, was entree into the A.C.C.’s suite of bowl games. Notre Dame will be counted as an A.C.C. team for bowl games outside the Orange Bowl, in which it is considered part of the pool of teams from the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference. The importance the Irish place on bowl access is a far cry from the days when Notre Dame refused to participate in bowls, viewing them as a distraction from the amateur mission of its athletics program. Of course, No. 8 Notre Dame, undefeated entering Saturday’s game and with the potential to make impressive statements with games against No. 16 Stanford, No. 1 Florida State and No. 18 U.S.C., hopes to appear in the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl — the two games on Jan. 1 that will make up the semifinals of the first College Football Playoff.