Once More Around: Notre Dame and the Big Ten Investigated

For the third time in the past ten years the Big Ten conference is looking to expand. And like in the past, Notre Dame has been the hot topic as the team that could make the jump.

There are only a handful of issues that are paramount to this discussion. Let’s investigate them individually.

Relevancy

We hear the accusation quite often that since Notre Dame has not been a national powerhouse since the early 1990’s, that the program has become irrelevant.

If it is indeed true that Notre Dame is not relevant anymore, does this have anything to do with the team’s independent status?

Or in other words, what is the correlation between joining a conference and playing as an independent?

Would the past be different if Notre Dame had played the last 10 years in the Big Ten?

Could we expect Notre Dame to become more relevant next year if they were to play in the Big Ten?

And what exactly does it mean to say that Notre Dame is irrelevant?

Obviously if we’re talking about winning football games, then yes, Notre Dame has slid somewhat into irrelevancy in comparison to programs like USC, Florida, and Texas.

But despite the lack of winning over the past fifteen years, Notre Dame has remained quite relevant in the world of college football.

It is this present dichotomy that engineers a lot of fanaticism from observers everywhere, particularly those who have a strong dislike for Notre Dame.

National Identity

A major part of what Notre Dame prides itself in as a football program is its national identity.

Being a small school in rural Indiana, the university has been able to recruit from all over the country, and more importantly, maintain the largest fan base in country by forging ahead for over a hundred years as an independent institution.

In fact, it is this national identity that has allowed Notre Dame to remain relevant over the past decade despite not winning like it has in the past.

It is uncertain just exactly how joining a conference would affect this national identity, but it is not too farfetched to think that it could very well impact it in a negative way.

Throughout the years, with Notre Dame debating conference affiliation, a heavy majority of fans of the university have made it abundantly clear that they favor independence.

Would it be a wise decision to upset this national fan base?

Does Notre Dame want to effectively turn its back on the very people who keep the school relevant, despite not winning, and pump millions of dollars of profits into the university’s pockets?

Scheduling

There are a number of factors that are involved when discussing Notre Dame’s schedule and how joining a conference would affect the team’s the Irish play.

Will Notre Dame be able to continue its rivalries with Southern California, Navy, Stanford, Boston College, and others?

Will joining the Big Ten strengthen Notre Dame’s schedule?

Will the Irish national fan base be happy with ten games a year in the Midwest for years on end?

In the end though, the makeup of Notre Dame’s schedule probably has little or no effect on the decision to join the Big Ten. That is to say, it is unlikely that Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick is worrying about whether remaining independent or joining the Big Ten will strengthen or weaken the schedule.

When the school has been able to consistently put together competitive schedules against Michigan, Pittsburgh, USC, Michigan State, Stanford, and others, the need to strengthen the schedule (or risk weakening the schedule), pales in comparison to other issues.

The BCS

Out of all of the issues involved, this is the most serious and the one which could “force our hand” as Swarbrick mentioned earlier last week.

The issue is simple: if Notre Dame cannot compete for a national championship due to rule changes to the BCS and major conference realignment, then they will think about losing their independence.

Still, this scenario seems incredibly unlikely.

There is no way a team that is as relevant as Notre Dame could be shut out of winning a BCS championship, given the school’s history, enormous fan base, and competitive schedule.

It would be all but illegal and the NCAA and BCS are not that stupid to walk away from the publicity and money-making machine that is Notre Dame.

Money

And finally, we come to the issue that is talked about more than any other.

Over the past five years programs in the SEC and the Big Ten have seen television deals raise their respective athletic revenues to record high levels. In contrast, these deals have begun to dwarf the current television deal with NBC that Notre Dame currently has.

Yet, the issue isn’t that Big Ten teams are now making more money than Notre Dame via the television market.

The issue remains, does Notre Dame make enough money to be able to compete at the highest level in football and other sports?

And the answer is without a doubt, yes.

Despite losing out on the new television market money, Notre Dame still remains a top 15 athletic revenue earner year in and year out. And compared to most of the other schools with 30,000 to 50,000 students, Notre Dame is tiny in comparison.

That results in Notre Dame earning roughly $5,500 per student through its athletic revenue, whereas a school like Ohio State only generates half that profit and with much more costs to run such a large university to boot.

Summary

The fears of Irish fans that Notre Dame will be joining the Big Ten (or any conference) are overblown. And the certainty that Notre Dame will make the move coming from all other voices is severely premature.

It will take a lot of change and a near crumbling of Notre Dame’s fan base, revenue and relevancy for the school to move to a conference.

The likelihood of new “super” conferences and rewritten BCS rules intent on shutting out Notre Dame football from competing for a national title are infinitely small.

It would be like Major League Baseball shutting out the New York Yankees from winning the World Series.

Even after fifteen years of mediocre football, Notre Dame is still too powerful, too influential and generates too much money and publicity for college football to turn its back on simply because the university does not act like everyone else.

It’s not as if Notre Dame is playing weak talent and trying to sneak into the BCS discussion.

The Fighting Irish are playing by the same rules as everyone else, except they just do things a little differently.

That may annoy the heck out of fans of other football teams, but the leaders of the NCAA and BCS know better than to exclude a titan of college football.

The rules will always include the Fighting Irish, and as a result, Notre Dame will remain independent.