Will the breakup or significant weakening of the ACC force ND into a conference?

When FSU, Clemson, and a few others leave the ACC for B10/SEC, virtually every marquee opponent for a future ND schedule will be in one of those 2 conferences. Whatever is left of the ACC will fully be considered a 2nd tier conference along with the Big 12. A continued partnership with the ACC for 5 games will essentially lower ND to that Tier 2 status in the eyes of recruits.

On the flip side, cherry picking big games to legitimize the schedule will become much harder because all of those names will already have a ridiculously tough conference schedule of 9, likely 10 games in the near future. They don’t need or even want ND as a non conference opponent.

So you have a cascading effect of reduced prestige, difficulty recruiting, a mostly non-P2 schedule, NBC not willing to pay B10 level money for that, and the already existing ban from top 4 playoff seeds. I don’t see how it continues other than voluntarily weakening the program through pure stubbornness.