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Notre Dame and the "Conference" Decision



As Notre Dame teeters on the brink of being eligible for the Midwest's great Holiday tradition - the Pizza Bowl at the home of the Detroit Lions - it is again time to consider whether the Irish should just bite the bullet and join a conference.

Star-divide

Unless the goal is to remain a curious and affectionate academic anomaly like the service academies, the competitive reasoning for Notre Dame to retain "Independent" status and hope to ever be a championship team again is now wafer-thin. Navy and Army have a national following, and everybody loves them too. But they don't have a bazillion-dollar TV deal with NBC because there's not enough happening on the bottom line to justify it. And it seems hard to fathom how what Notre Dame is doing on the field will keep the eyeballs tuning in to continue watching the train wreck every season.

The time to jump to the safety of a conference is now. The evidence is overwhelming. Consider...

As is well known, their last national title was during the Reagan administration (1988) and they've only had one other since Jimmy Carter was in office (1977.)

But it's worse than that if you just bump it back one more year and one more President. From the end of the Ford Administration (1976) to today, Notre Dame has amassed just 8 seasons with 10 or more victories. How does this stack up against the other football programs with pretentions to national greatness and big seasons to back it up?

  • Florida State and Nebraska each have 18 seasons during that time period with 10 or more wins.
  • Oklahoma is next with 15 seasons in double-digits or more.
  • Five schools can sport 14 such seasons: Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Texas, and Miami-FL.
  • Technically, Boise State did it 14 times as well, but not all of those were during the period when the Broncos were Division 1A. But this hardly matters: they've won 10 or more games 8 times just since 1999!
  • Florida has had a dozen seasons since 1976 with 10 or better wins.
  • Main Irish rival Southern Cal has done it 11 times, and so has comparatively new upstart ACC power Virginia Tech.
  • Two marginal second-tier teams in their respective conferences (Texas A&M and Washington) have - like Notre Dame - each done the trick 8 times.
  • LSU, Iowa, Kansas State and TCU all check in right behind at 7 double-digit winning seasons. (And TCU has done all seven just since 2000, so like Boise State, expect them to move up fast.)

That's at least 18 teams - fully 15 percent of the big-time college football universe - at least matching or substantially eclipsing what Touchdown Jesus has been watching over the last 33 seasons when it comes to a football program putting up wins that should be considered in a top-10 ranking conversation. The evidence is in that this is not really much of a top-20 program anymore. A number of the schools noted above have come from comparatively nowhere relatively fast to pass the Irish by with more big seasons, and now deserve more benefit of doubt in the rankings when they win lots of games: TCU, Boise State, Kansas State, Virginia Tech.

And, of course, the situation seems to be deteriorating even more of late. The worst Notre Dame season in more than 40 years ended less than 24 months ago.

So, the question isn't so much whether to join a conference, but when and which one. Three important criteria should guide the decision:

  • Regional affiliation: South Bend is in the heart of the Midwest and that is where Notre Dame should play its seasons.
  • Balance and room to add: Ideally, the perfect conference should have an uneven number of teams, so adding Notre Dame will evenly balance out a pair of divisions and make conference title game planning easier.
  • Proper appreciation for Notre Dame: As noted above, there are now many conferences with many teams that have comparable or much better history over the last few decades in comparison. Not just anybody will properly respect and appreciate what they are gaining by adding Notre Dame, and the Irish doubtlessly want nothing to do with any situation where such respect is not forthcoming.

There is only one situation that meets all this criteria. The West Division of the Mid-American Conference has just six teams, while the East Division has seven. If Notre Dame can get an invite to the Pizza Bowl, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

This is a FanPost, written by a member of the TOC community. It does not represent the official positions of The Only Colors, Inc.--largely because we have no official positions.

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Wow.

That is hilarious.

I doubt ND will join a conf as long as they have NBC and the specific rules in the BCS. There is just the possibility of too much money. Also, they might eventually hire a good coach and be a national team again.

by DrDetroit on Nov 24, 2009 6:41 AM CST reply actions  

They wont cause of tradition

They have been playin the same big ten and pac 10 teams and navy for so long that if they join a conference they wont be able to schedule their own games

by LionsPistonsFan on Nov 25, 2009 8:55 PM CST reply actions  

Money, not Tradtion

NBC contract they don’t have to share. Plus cash money for all of the ESPN games they also don’t have to share.

All Bowl game cash they don’t have to share.

If they get to a BCS game the football team gets a check for $12 million.

by DrDetroit on Nov 25, 2009 9:47 PM CST up reply actions  

Obviously, dripping sarcasm about the MAC...

… but I’m half-serious about the conference matter. Half.

The NBC deal just can’t keep on keeping on, can it? I mean, jeez, even if Notre Dame is made of money, the media is not. I know a lot of journalists, print and broadcast, and these are not happy times for most of them. Neither Notre Dame’s performance on the field, nor NBC’s financial security, bode well for assuming the status quo goes on.

And… is Notre Dame just made of money?

How many contracts can they afford to buy out?

If they don’t have NBC revenue rolling in?

And have erratic bowl revenue from minor games?

Nice to keep all your bowl revenue — when you are actually going to bowls. Not so nice when you are not and there is no conference to split the proceeds for you in the lean times. The Hawaii Bowl thing last year probably cost them money.

Left out of the diatribe above is another fact: Their schedule strength has been going way down, but has not been leading to more wins. Look at the teams Ty Willingham DID beat, and then compare to Charlie Weis. And yet, they have the same record. It isn’t even close – Notre Dame has gone backwards over the last five years.

I really don’t care for bringing them into the Big Ten, so that is NOT where this is coming from. If there’s a 12th team decision to make, then Pitt, Missouri or Iowa State make much more sense. (Actually, all three would be a wildly entertaining idea.)

For the most part, as a fan, I just resent the preferences given to them in the BCS decisions while a team like Boise is often left in the cold. That is crap.

But if they just putz along for another decade in neutral and worse… it does seem that this cannot go on. The Big East, for lots of obvious reasons, is where I’d bet they will be within a decade.

by Ken Braun on Nov 25, 2009 11:44 PM CST reply actions  

UPDATE

Freep has a new story out. It’s a long story – four pages.

See summary, above.

by Ken Braun on Dec 3, 2009 10:28 PM CST reply actions  

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