Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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10 DECEMBER 2023 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME Notre Dame, NBC To Remain Broadcast Partners Through 2029 Before the 2023 season started, one of the hottest conversations concerning Notre Dame athletics centered on who the Fighting Irish would agree to terms with as a broadcast partner with the current NBC contract expiring soon. That cooled once games took hold of the spotlight, but the issue took cen- ter stage again — seemingly out of nowhere — and has finally been resolved prior to the penultimate game of the season. It's been Notre Dame on NBC since 1991, and it's still going to be Notre Dame on NBC though 2029. The university announced an extension of a relationship that has spanned more than three decades an hour before Notre Dame kicked off against Wake Forest in South Bend Nov. 18. Director of athletics Jack Swarbrick said he's thrilled to continue a "historic collaboration" with NBC. "In the next generation of this partnership, we will collaborate to provide our fans even more Notre Dame content through a variety of NBCUniversal's distribution channels while continuing to put our student-athletes and their stories at the heart of our messaging," Swarbrick said in a statement. Dollar figures for the terms of the deal were not released by the university. However, the press re- lease did specify that "revenues from the partnership have played a key role in Notre Dame's financial aid endowment since the start of the relationship in 1991 when university officers allocated a portion of the football television contract revenue for undergraduate scholarship endowment (not athletic scholarships)." The release stated Notre Dame undergraduate students have received more than $100 million in aid from revenue generated by partnering with NBC. Enough monetary gain by the athletics department itself should help Notre Dame remain indepen- dent as a football program despite a turbulent reality outside of South Bend in terms of conference realignment. At times, people pondered if the Irish would secure a significant enough TV rights contract to ensure independence. That doesn't seem to be a worry through the 2020s. Swarbrick said in the Wake Forest pregame show on Peacock that independence is in good shape with the new deal. Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman believes the NBC deal is advantageous for purposes related to his everyday proceedings as well. "It adds to the value of what Notre Dame provides, right?" he said. "And that's the ability for us to go sell that in recruiting. You're the only college football program with its exclusive network. To me, it's that Notre Dame value, the value this place truly provides you." It's been a successful season for Notre Dame on NBC, too. Broadcasts are averaging 5.1 million viewers in 2023, which is the largest single-season audience through five games since 2005 and up 86 percent from this time last year. The Ohio State-Notre Dame game averaged 10.6 million viewers, ranking as the second-most-watched college football game of all time only behind the No. 2 Irish taking on the No. 1 Florida State Seminoles in the 1993 "Game of the Century." "There is no better tradition than Notre Dame football in South Bend, and we are thrilled to keep that tradition within the NBC Sports family as we extend our relationship as the exclusive home of Fighting Irish home games through the end of the decade," NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said. — Tyler Horka Xavier Watts' Future Is Difficult To Read Alexa, play "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash. That's Notre Dame senior safety Xavier Watts' theme music. Key word: senior. Techni- cally, he is one in terms of academic year. By eligibility, he's a junior. That seems to be the story he's sticking to late in the 2023 season. Watts, the nation's leader in interceptions with 7 through Week 12, was not one of the 31 participants in Notre Dame's Senior Day ceremony prior to kickoff of the Wake Forest game Nov. 18. That was his choice. "He was a guy I talked with — a lot of those guys that might be going into their fourth year — I had a conversation earlier in the year, 'Do you want to be considered a senior this year?' He was one of them that did not," head coach Marcus Freeman said. That does not mean Watts is returning to Notre Dame for sure in 2024. If he receives an NFL Draft grade from scouts that tells him it's a good idea to declare, then that's what he will probably do. Senior Day is not the be-all, end-all. But the juxtaposition of Watts having the opportunity to walk and choosing not to on top of being one of five finalists for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, awarded to the top defensive player in college football, is certainly interesting. "I don't know what he's going to do in his future," Freeman said. — Tyler Horka Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick secured a TV rights deal extension with NBC just a few months before stepping down from his post. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Senior safety Xavier Watts, by eligibility a junior, has not yet announced whether he will return to South Bend for another year of college football in 2024. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER