Notre Dame Football: Deloss Dodds' Interest in Irish Will Remain a Pipe Dream

We have talked about this time and again; Notre Dame does not need a conference so long as the four super-conferences are still just a rumor on the horizon.

The Fighting Irish make money. They get viewers.The team does not need a league to help legitimize what they are doing. They need wins to help boost their profile, but as far as off-the-field cache goes, a league does them no good.

So, when DeLoss Dodds of Texas goes on record admitting that he's got interest and has been courting the Fighting Irish, pardon me for chuckling just a bit at the fine Texan's ambition.

It is a subtle play, as Dodds mentions Notre Dame playing Olympic sports in the Big 12, while its football team merely plays a few non-conference games against the conference, technically remaining independent. 

Subtle, but smart. Dodds is not just being the good man by helping the Fighting Irish find a home for their sports should the Big East implode. No, Dodds is doing what he has always done—helping find a way to grow Texas' bottom line.

Throw some annual games against Notre Dame on the schedule and hello, spike in revenue.

For Notre Dame, this truly is just silly, even from a purely logistical side. Flying teams from South Bend, Ind. all over the tiny landscape of the Big 12 makes little to no sense. Throw in the fact that the Big 12 only sponsors 16 sports, and the 21-team Fighting Irish athletic department would be scrambling to find homes for its teams.

Men's soccer, men's and women's lacrosse, fencing and hockey are all still looking for a league to join with this move. Unless the Big 12 is planning on adding sports, it is hardly providing relief to the Fighting Irish.

In fact, it makes things worse. Instead of just hockey and fencing playing outside of a league, the Irish would have five sports all searching for a home. Four of those sports are non-revenue sports that the folks still get pretty excited about from a regional standpoint.

When DeLoss Dodds talks about "giving" anything to someone, the eye must be out for what the Longhorns stand to gain. Odds are, it is more than anything the party he's "giving" something to ever will.

For Notre Dame, a chance to boost the Big 12's revenue while scrambling to place sports programs that the Big 12 doesn't sanction is a nightmare scenario, not a plus.