How To Get Notre Dame Football in the Big East

t road game. Showing Notre Dame Football on their channels is like crack cocaine to ESPN/ABC, and they are always looking for a fix.


—The Big East will also get better national exposure when it plays their games at Notre Dame every year on NBC. Every two years, every current team in the Big East will have at least one game televised on NBC—regardless of how well they are performing on the season.

Ordinarily a team had to play in the Gator Bowl or hope to be lucky enough to have a road game at Notre Dame before it could be showcased on NBC. In this scenario, it is almost the equivalent of the Big East having its own little round-robin contract with NBC. Those are four games every year that may not have otherwise been televised, and they are all another opportunity to showcase Big East teams on a national scale.


—The Big East will receive way better lower-level bowls because of the possibility of a smaller-venue bowl getting Notre Dame every other year. Can you imagine the folk's reaction at the Meineke Bowl if they were able to one day land Notre Dame as part of the Big East's bowl package?

Besides, the Sun Bowl was willing to sell its soul in an attempt at getting Notre Dame just once, and you can bet others would too. The Big East won't be getting the Cotton Bowl, but its second-place bowl won't be the Meineke Bowl either, and I bet no Big East team has to play in Canada in the future if Notre Dame joins up.

—Each school will benefit from having Notre Dame on its schedule too, as attendance will certainly increase by having Notre Dame on the schedule, which means more season ticket sales and donations translating to more revenue. More revenue means better facilities, and better facilities means better chances to land top-notch recruits.


—Concerning recruiting, that would be a nice little nugget to dangle in front of kids looking at your school—that a kid would get a shot at playing against Notre Dame every year. Never hurts to be successful by association.


—Also, corporate sponsorship for the league will increase as well over what it has had in the past even though we are in a recession.

Will Chrysler suddenly pay to be the official car of the Big East? No, but then Chrysler may not be around much longer anyway.

However, corporations know that Notre Dame is a name that sells, and being tied to Notre Dame is a sure-fire way to get your product in front of a lot of the eyes of consumers with money to spend.


—Finally for the Big East, it will put an end to any "BCS berth being taken away" garbage and will give the football schools that coveted ninth member that evens out scheduling, allowing for four home conference games each year and four away conference games each year.

Each school would also be tasked with finding only four non-conference games each year instead of five, and with skyrocketing payouts to the Buffalo's and Kent State's of the world to get them to come and play a one-and-done at your house, eliminating the need to coax even just one into signing a contract with you could potentially save you a few hundred thousand dollars every year in payout money.

In short, conference games are cheaper nowadays than non-conference games, regardless of who you are playing.


AND WHAT DOES THE BIG 10 DO?

Assuming that Notre Dame joins the Big East and kills all hope the Big 10 ever had of landing the Irish...

We all know who Father Time mentioned as possible targets for the Big 10, and you could make any of those work if you had to, but in my opinion there are better choices out west.

Besides, Syracuse has too small of a stadium and aren't even close to being competitive in football right now. Pittsburgh doesn't even have a stadium, as they have to rent from the Steelers. And Rutgers—although a good academic fit—has been decent in football for all of about 10 minutes and don't fit the geographic footprint nor the constituency of the Big 10.

As for looking out west, you could add Iowa State and they do fit geographically, but I don't think they add value to the Big 10 that the Big 10 doesn't already have. Plus, the Big 10 is looking for television sets to sell the Big 10 Network on. They already have every TV set in Iowa that they could carry with the Hawkeyes anyway.

Nebraska is an intriguing possibility, and personally I think they fit the bill as far as the best demographic fit for the Big 10. The Nebraska name is well known and a Nebraska-Ohio State matchup is going to make people want to tune in and watch.

Still, I think the Big 10 wants a given top-25 TV market. The Big 10 already has "Top 25 Markets" in Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland-Akron, Minneapolis-St.Paul, and maybe Philadelphia if you want to give them Philly due to having Penn State in conference.

Adding the No. 21-ranked TV market would be a huge boost to what price the Big 10 could receive for airing its network on respective cable carriers around the country.

So what is the "No. 21" market? St. Louis. By bringing in Missouri from the Big 12, you are getting a huge number of households, a strong player on the field and on the court, and a great geographic fit.

In turn, the Big 12 could grab up a very worthy TCU program and not miss a beat. All's well that ends well.

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