Boston College Daily Links: Ryan Quigley Is This Week's Best ACC Punter (Small Victories)

Even if NBC bails on the Irish, Notre Dame has zero incentive to join a conference. ESPN or CBS would easily pick up that contract, much like ESPN’s current deals with BYU and Texas.

The only way Notre Dame joins the ACC / Big Ten is to change the college football postseason format.

If college football wises up and goes to a playoff, you’ll see Notre Dame join a conference. Short of that, so long as the Irish maintain their “9-wins and BCS” deal, they aren’t going anywhere. The only other thing that can change this is if the BCS abandons the automatic qualifying for the non-title game bowls and allows the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange to pursue their own conference tie-ins. In that scenario, I’m not sure ND has much leverage but to join one of the Big Five.

Still disagree that Notre Dame would instantly compete for the ACC title more often than not.

Part of the appeal for recruits is that ND gets to play a national schedule (USC, Michigan, Purdue, Navy, Pitt, BC) and are on network TV every weekend. Put them in the ACC or Big Ten and the Irish can no longer play a national schedule. They’ll still likely be on TV every weekend, but the loss of playing a national schedule (and playing in NFL stadiums every once in a while) makes the Irish football program that less special.

I think over time you’d see the southern programs — Florida State, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech — win the conference more often than Notre Dame. ND would become a solid conference team, but without its two big selling points (national schedule against traditional rivals on network TV), ND becomes another good-but-not-great private school playing in a conference dominated by southern, public schools.

Many Notre Dame fans, myself included, worry that Notre Dame will lose its individuality if it joins the Big Ten. When you’re a small Catholic school in a small Indiana town, you need something unique to set you apart, not just to football recruits but to high school students around the country. Notre Dame has that now with football independence. Good or bad, ND gets mentioned on Sportscenter every week. The Irish also have the flexibility to schedule games in California or Texas or the East Coast to market the school across the country. If Notre Dame joins the Big Ten, they lose that. Playing games in Iowa or Minnesota doesn’t add anything. Yeah, we’ll still have OOC games, but in a sixteen team league (which is what I’m assuming in this scenario) how much freedom would we really have? Would we want to schedule USC, Navy, and Boston College every year and basically lock ourselves into the same schedule year in or year out or would drop some of our traditional rivalries? Neither of those options are particularly appealing.

The Irish guys are worried about this. Replace “Big Ten” with “ACC” and the same issues are there.

http://www.bcinterruption.com/2011/11/17/2566832/notre-dame-football-boston-college-preview-predictions-november-19

The problem is you only associate relevance with football power. It’s not that simple. If the powers-that-be were to reduce relevance to one issue, it would not be football power— it would be money. And money is where Notre Dame is anything but irrelevant.

The fact that a 3-loss Notre Dame team is not fully eliminated from a BCS at-large bid in most years speaks to their relevance. How many other schools would bowl committees fall over to invite? They know Notre Dame fans travel and spend money.

The fact that schools hosting Notre Dame see sell-outs and record attendance figures speaks to their relevance.

The fact that some of those schools, upon beating this mediocre Notre Dame, still call the victory one of the finest in their program history speaks to their relevance.

The fact that Notre Dame is able to play anywhere in the country and still draw fans who love them and hate them to the game speaks to their relevance.

The fact that Notre Dame’s games are nationally broadcast speaks to their relevance. No, it is not unique anymore, but it provides quite a stage for their players (and opponents) to get national attention.

Few people will change their mind about Notre Dame. If Notre Dame were a top-15 team, I’m certain ND-haters would be quick to say ND either beat up on weak competition or won over the media yet again.

And since when has college football been concerned with crowning the best team in the country? A small group of elite programs has a disproportionately large share of history and titles:

Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State
Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, USC, Alabama
Tennessee, Florida State, Florida, Miami, LSU

Sure, you’ll have a Stanford, Wisconsin, Boise State, TCU, BYU, etc make things interesting every now and then, but you could pick a small group of schools from the elite list and guarantee a high finish most years.