No More Complaints About Notre Dame. Please.

  Let’s begin with something which sparked a lot of comments from last week’s blog. That would be the Notre Dame-CFP flap.

I remarked that I felt no pity for the Notre Dame athletic administration. They knew that  they were dealing from both ends when they made their pact with the College Football Playoff committee to garner greater consideration as an independent because, to put it bluntly, they ARE Notre Dame, a singularly popular academic institution with a football team. Glorified in the Great Depression by sportswriters and able to capture the imagination of so many Catholics throughout the country, thus drawing capacity crowds in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the Irish became powerful media darlings. 

Growing up, a staple of Sunday morning television in the New York market was the package of Notre Dame highlights filmed on Saturdays, edited overnight and voiced over by the great Lindsey Nelson, a national TV announcer for NBC and a local star broadcasting the infant New York Mets in the 1960’s. The next day—whether it was at school or in businesses in the area—there was bound to be a discussion about the exploits of the boys from South Bend. 

Even being Jewish and not actively rooting for Notre Dame, I was awed by the mythical stature of coaches Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian. Along with the greatness of Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung and other star Irish players.  And I did watch the movie Rudy, a story about a walk-on who captured the spirit of a team and its fans when he finally got his chance to play. 

In my quest to see as many college campuses and stadiums, I mapped out a stop at Notre Dame. That was part of an itinerary which began in Detroit; migrated through Michigan; stopped in Green Bay to pay homage to the Packers and Madison to see the University of Wisconsin and friends who lived there; then wound into Chicago before returning to Detroit. 

It was an early morning mid-Summer trip from the Windy City, with my wife and two tired children in our rental car. I was hellbent on seeing the campus and at least driving by the fabled Notre Dame Stadium. 

I found the stadium easily. We parked the car. The gate was open as the maintenance crew was cutting the historic sod. It looked smaller than I thought it would (then again, I thought Ohio Stadium looked bigger than Michigan Stadium—which, capacity-wise it wasn’t). Older and a little worn. 

Dutifully, my family posed for pictures and I ran around like the lunatic I could be at times, getting whatever angles of the field and stands I could before being shooed away. I had reached the Mecca for so many and I was in the presence of stadium royalty. 

Then reality struck home. Little children need to go to the bathroom. Try finding a place for that on a campus which was still very much asleep and with school not in session. The basketball arena was locked tight. Other doors couldn’t be opened. I tried to ease my children’s concerns. But the pressure was mounting. 

Then I remembered that the tall building with the mural on it—affectionately called “Touchdown Jesus”—was the school library. So we headed to the doors and saw movement inside. 

Except that nobody was moving to the doors. The library was not ready for public admission. 

I continued to knock on the doors and gesture about my children. Finally, a female librarian came to the door and in a typical manner and voice, scolded me for banging on the doors. 

I told her I had two children who needed to go and no place was open. I pleaded to her sensibilities. 

She looked to the security guard next to her and said okay, I will make an exception. She informed us that the guard would accompany us to the restrooms just down the hall from the entrance

He stood outside the doors, closely monitoring the situation. Not that we planned a heist of any books from the library, nor were we going to desecrate the building in any manner, other than taking care of business in the lavatories. 

We were hustled out of the building and I could distinctly hear the locks being shut to keep the place intact after we had intruded. There’s more to the story which includes what I said to my wife as we headed to our car. 

The point I want to make is the people at Notre Dame act as if their school is sacred. Whether it is workmen, librarians, security guards or athletic directors, the belief that Notre Dame is better than anywhere else is palpable. 

I’m not saying that other schools don’t display arrogance in public. The Ivies are certainly like that. Known academic schools like Michigan, Virginia, Duke, MIT all retain special status from their academics. 

But at Notre Dame, they want to stand alone yet reap all the benefits of conferences and their members. Emboldened with money which flows to them from NBC and Peacock, which exclusively televise Irish home football games, plus a merchandising arm which appears to match that of “America’s Team,” the Dallas Cowboys, the coffers of the school are filled with donations and revenue streams other schools could only wish they had. This is a continuation of the groundbreaking deal the school signed with ABC in 1953, generating the needed capital to stand alone while carving out a national schedule  with the likes of schools like Stanford and USC, the service academies and others willing to schedule the school to obtain more exposure in the pre-ESPN era. 

Standing alone in football is what they crave in South Bend. Keeping as much of  the money for themselves as would be possible. Yet they need to compete in other sports—scheduling becomes a nightmare remaining as an independent.

Notre Dame has ventured into other conferences to meet the demands for opponents. For many years the basketball teams toiled in the Big East, a predominantly Catholic school league. That was not exactly what the school wanted, but more of what it needed.

Notre Dame repeatedly sought entry into the Western Conference (now the Big Ten), only to be rejected led by opponent Fielding Yost of Michigan, who was influenced mightily by anti-Catholic sentiment of the day. All rumors that Notre Dame wanted to join the Big Ten in recent years were that—just rumors (Men’s ice hockey does compete in the Big Ten—but that is isolated and not enough to thaw the frostiness between the school and the conference). 

What has gotten Notre Dame football into a pickle was the COVID-19 pandemic. To be able to play, Notre Dame signed an agreement with a very willing Atlantic Coast Conference to play its entire 2020 slate against ACC institutions. In doing that, agreements were reached for other sports and for the football team to play 5 ACC schools each season. If Notre Dame sought conference affiliation, it must be with the ACC. 

Notre Dame was more than wiling to live with this, given its alliance with NBC. Besides, which teams, outside of Miami, Clemson and Florida State were likely to give the Irish much trouble—and it was unlikely that they would have to play all three in any given year. That was a beautiful deal which should get ten wins nearly every season. 

Plus being a full partner with the conferences at the CFP table was better than being in a conference and having revenues slashed, too. Notre Dame expected deference would be given to them as it is to the SEC. 

Then the unthinkable happened. A really sound Irish squad lost two close, early season contests to Miami of the ACC and Texas A&M from the SEC. Those schools each recorded double-digit wins in 2025. 

The committee had to weigh whether Miami losing to Louisville by three points and at SMU in overtime pushed Notre Dame ahead of the Hurricanes. It decided it didn’t. 

Fans of the Irish were outraged. The school decided that if they weren’t good enough to pass a team it had lost to early on and be a part of the CFP—they surely were better than James Madison or Tulane, teams which came from the Group of 5 conferences not named SEC, ACC, Big Ten or Big 12—they just would not settle for a bowl game (and perhaps shared revenue—which they didn’t have to do if in the CFP). 

Despite my story, I really have no axe to grind with Notre Dame. Could the playoffs have been better if they were included instead of Miami? That might be answered when the Hurricanes and the Aggies square off in College Station on Saturday in what has been dubbed the “Notre Dame Bowl.” 

And any question as to whether Alabama belonged in the playoffs was resoundingly answered when the Crimson Tide rolled into Norman, erased a 17-0 deficit and won 34-24 on Friday night. Next up for the Tide is #1 Indiana in the Rose Bowl.

We have a set field of 12 vying for the championship. Ohio State, Indiana, Texas Tech, Oregon and Georgia are the top five seeds. And to the detractors of JMU and Tulane, the Division II, III and FCS playoffs take more teams than the CFP, allowing for conference champions from a variety of leagues (now including the Ivy League) to experience the reward for a very good season by playing additional contests. 

Until the field is expanded to 16 teams with no byes, then we will have the hiccups and still experience schools bellyaching about having a good enough record yet being excluded. I don’t think that the 12 teams are sorry that Duke defeated Virginia, which left the Cavaliers on the sidelines and thus eliminated Notre Dame, too. 

Besides, I would much rather have discussed the LA Rams-Seattle Thursday night showdown won by the Seahawks on two 2 point conversions. Or the Knicks winning the NBA Cup. Or even Texas A&M stopping the undefeated then 33-0 Nebraska women’s volleyball machine en route to the NCAA finals. 

 

So no more complaints about Notre Dame. Please. Their largesse can become self-defeating.