Notre Dame Football: Can They Survive as an Independent?

No team in the country is safe at this point with the whole college football landscape being turned upside down. Every team is trying to switch conferences and create "super-conferences," all so they can make even more millions than they already have.

There is one team that is happy where they are and that is Notre Dame. The Irish could care less about who goes where and what this conference is doing because they built this program being independent and they plan to keep it that way.

Notre Dame has repeatedly said over the years that it doesn't plan on changing tradition and will remain independent.

That's fine. Now the question is can they survive doing so?

The short answer is yes.

Almost every team looking to move is doing this mainly for financial reasons. It's all about the money but that's something Notre Dame doesn't need. They already have a television contract with NBC that televises all of their home games. The contract is good 'til 2015 and if they don't renew it, there will be several other TV networks begging to pick it up.

Notre Dame makes money off of that and money for going to a BCS bowl game. If they don't reach a BCS bowl game they still make $1.4 million. They also don't have to split the profits with other teams. This program is in a win-win situation.

Some people say the Irish need to join a conference to become relevant again. I call bologna. Notre Dame hasn't won a National Championship since 1988 and you're still reading this article and still wondering how they're doing.

The Irish are one of those teams that are going to be bigger than most because of their rich history and tradition. They could be on a six-game losing streak and they're still one of the first teams talked about and on the front page of the newspaper.

If Notre Dame wasn't such a big deal, conferences wouldn't hope that they join them in creating a conference that's good enough to compete with the SEC. It's them reaching out to the Irish, not the other way around.

Of course Notre Dame is going to lose a lot of it's marquee matchups because conferences are going to expand their conference scheduling. Of course that will result in losing some top recruits who will chose to play elsewhere.

But this is still Notre Dame and there will still be top players that want to play there regardless. They're still going to be all over the major networks and they're still going to get the top coaches to coach for them.

Notre Dame may be better off going to a conference in the long haul, but they can survive where they're at.