Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541906
22 JANUARY 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY ERIC HANSEN I t was midway through a 30-min- ute press conference called by Notre Dame director of athletics Pete Bev- acqua Dec. 9, with no preordained agenda, that he finally captured the mo- ment, the context, the opportunity … That will define him. "This season is not going to become an unfortunate footnote in the history of Notre Dame football," he said. The season, the College Football Playoff snub, the heartache, the push- back, the fallout, the ACC relationship, the responsibility to not only point out the problems with where the selection process for the two-year-old CFP is al- ready broken but to be a warrior when it comes to helping fix it. All of it. Not to mention be a powerful voice in the dizzying evolution on the financial side of the sport, which suddenly doesn't feel like the most urgent part of college football that needs an infusion of fair- ness and sanity, but very much still does. Make no mistake, when Bevac- qua stepped up to the podium at the Hammes Auditorium inside the Joyce Center, he was stepping into history. How he follows up on his words and his refracted vision is how history will remember him. And the venue couldn't have been more poetically fitting. It's the same room — though remod- eled — where center Chuck Lanza put his feet on the stage at the Notre Dame football team's first meeting with new coach Lou Holtz 40 years ago, and Holtz famously responded, "If you want to be part of this program, son, you get your feet off the stage." Same room where George O'Leary met with the media for the first and only time during his less-than-a-week run as Irish head coach in December 2001, where Charlie Weis was introduced to the media three years later as Tyrone Willingham's successor. And the same room where then- athletics director Kevin White had to explain Willingham's purge after three seasons that White neither engineered nor even endorsed. And now the room where Notre Dame football starts to redefine itself. "For these players, who when they're 54 years old and thinking back to their college time, it would kill me if they think back at this and say, 'Wow, what a dis- appointment that season was,'" Bevac- qua said in framing this moment in the Hammes Auditorium. "It wasn't. It was a magical season. 'You did amazing things. Let's not forget that.' That's our main ob- ligation to those players right now. And to make sure it's never repeated." HOW NOTRE DAME ARRIVED AT THIS INFLECTION POINT Bevacqua did take care of the neces- sary housekeeping loose ends: • That it was the process that he had issues with, not that it was Miami that took the final spot in the CFP. "These rankings can't be a game of musical chairs at a fifth-grade birthday party. And that's what it felt like to us." • That Notre Dame's player-led deci- sion to skip the Pop-Tarts Bowl Dec. 27 in Orlando, Fla., isn't a permanent boy- cott by the Irish on the bowl system. It's unique to this team and this season. "We can't speak for future years," Bevacqua said. "We can't speak for what the captains on the team feel like, the nature of the season. Maybe you started CHANNELING THE PAIN Pete Bevacqua's next steps will define his tenure and redefine Notre Dame football Bevacqua told a media gathering on Dec. 9, two days after the CFP snubbed the Irish, that he and the university have an obligation to help make the process better, not just for Notre Dame but for all schools. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER