There may not have been a ton of people who watched the BCS
National Championship Game from start to finish because let’s face it, it
wasn’t exactly the clash of titans that the media wanted it to be. Notre Dame
came out to great fanfare and everyone thought that perhaps the years of Rudy,
the years of “playing like a champion today” were finally back, and none of
that walked out the tunnel in Miami. So what was the problem with Notre Dame?
Here’s my opinion. Notre Dame’s undefeated record doesn’t amount to a whole lot
because of whom they decide to play because of the Independent Status with the
NCAA. The Fighting Irish get to pick and choose whom they get to go against
because they don’t belong to a particular conference and that’s just the way
they like it, why you ask? Because it makes them look better than they actually
are.
Here’s some
research for what I’m talking about. Looking at ND’s schedule you will notice
that there is an interesting collection of teams, mostly comprised of the Big
10 and the ACC. Now only one of those is a legitimate football conference and
allow me to give you a hint on whom it is (Wake Forest is not in it…). Out of
those two conferences from which they pulled half of their schedule none of
them went up for a conference title and only two (Michigan and Miami) had
winning records in their conferences. What you should read in this is that
Notre Dame is picking for themselves the bottom halves of those conference’s
brackets. How does that sound like a national championship winning team? It
doesn’t. Looking at Notre Dame’s overall schedule, though 8 teams on their
dance card had winning records only 2 of them had records with 3 loses or
fewer. Their opponents had a combined overall record (including bowl games) of
86-68 which is pretty good overall but still looks like an easy road for Notre
Dame.
So why join
a conference for real? Not this farce that Notre Dame is doing to the ACC
saying that they won’t be official football members of the ACC but have agreed
to play 5 games against ACC opponents. Notre Dame should join a conference
because that would force them to play the stronger members of any conference.
Joining the Big 10, which is the conference they should be in for all sports,
would have to play an undefeated Ohio State, or an early conference test
against an underrated Northwestern team. Having them play a full slate of
conference foes would give them better tests than teams like Boston College
(2-10) or Wake Forest (5-7) are going to give them in ACC play. By the way,
this unholy alliance with the ACC is completely a move by the ACC to stay alive
as a viable football conference, which were the same reasons why they added
Boston College and VA Teach in 2004/5 and look how well those moves worked out.
In the end,
Notre Dame is never going to fully join a conference as a football school.
Being independent affords them too many opportunities. They will still get to
play their traditional rivals (Stanford, USC and Navy) and will still allow
them to play the dregs of whatever conference they chose while not sharing any
revenue as far as I can tell but still gaining access to conference related
bowls. So the ACC gets none of Notre Dame’s money but Notre Dame still gets to
go to the Orange Bowl and get ACC money from that. Overall, Notre Dame is
aligning itself with the wrong conference for them to my sports fan logic but
the perfect conference for them financially because the ACC would accept anything
for them to get all the history that Notre Dame Football brings. The Fighting
Irish put together a good team that probably would have beaten a number of
teams at the top of any conference but we’ll never know until they have to
schedule teams like Florida State or Ohio State year in and year out.
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