ND has significant leverage with the ACC. ND-Miami was the highest rated game involving any ACC team and I’m pretty sure if all, but not most ACC teams that played them saw their highest or second highest ratings of the year for that game.
And a lot of those schools will want to play them anyway. That’s BCs only shot at a sellout. GameDay is never at Pitt without the Domers. The top tier of the SEC and Big Ten can tell them to fuck off but the Rutgers and Cincis and Kansas’ of the world are gonna take that call.
And eventually this whole mania not to schedule good OOC teams will die down and good programs will realize you can’t just put a dollar sign on having the spotlight on you all spring and summer as you get ready for a great OOC tilt. Being the first GameDay of the season. Someone will get bold and schedule a good series, ans maybe get rewarded with a CFP berth and things will swing the other way.
Media partners will start griping too if it becomes a pattern of the most valuable properties ducking each other on purpose, it’d be like the Yanks and Mets pulling down the Subway Series and expecting no one to react.
A single-program cancellation won’t move the needle, but no one in the SEC or the Big Ten FO wants to be renegotiating the rights and get shown shitty, declining ratings for the first 2-3 weeks of the season.