EDIT: Sorry, meant as a reply to tky21, who has since deleted his response.
Simply put - why do you care so much about our football revenue? I sure as hell don't. If we ever need money, it's there.
Why the fixation? '... but giving up $25 million every year to play one less ACC game so that we can call ourselves 'independent' seems like it may be a pretty steep price and that price is only getting steeper as more time passes.' OMG! We are making less than others!! We can't have that! Therefore, we must surrender our identity and pivot so that we can be LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.
Simply because we derive less money from football than others, means nothing. If you truly believe this is all about 'calling ourselves independent', then I can't help you.
Seems to me, in spite of this incredible disadvantage, we were able to snap our fingers and come up with $440M for Campus Crossroads (which I hate, but that's another thread). Oh, and then we pivoted and somehow built a $40M state of the art, 2nd new indoor practice facility. All this in spite of our paltry $15M/yr NBC deal.
Everyone should be so lucky to 'suffer' like ND does.