Rockne's Roundtable

One of out top priorities needs to be securing options to different tier bowl games. This would be a great start.

How about a top priority of shush your face? If they waited to set things in motion someone else might have taken the spot.

Winning doesn't solve everything. Very few teams will be in the four-team playoff mix year in and year out.

If Notre Dame wants to remain independent, it will have to strike deals with a number of bowl games/conferences to have a decent place to play in those years it isn't among the top four, which will be the majority of the time.

Middling conference teams know they'll be taken care of because of their respective league tie-ins. It has nothing to do with how good Notre Dame is. Bowls would likely choose even a mediocre ND team over most other schools (or soon-to-be playoff), but their hands are tied. League contracts with bowls protect league members and control, for the most part, who plays where.

Jack Swarbrick's proactive approach as Notre Dame AD is a very refreshing change .He looks at the big picture and realizes that ND. has to change it's approach to future bowl game appearances.I believe that he can keep our football independence and still get the Irish on major bowl games.

+1 Wes, that was my point, even though i didn't spell it out nearly as well as you.

Swarbrick is doing a great job with all this i will be happy to get it all settled orange would be great but i just want to get the tie in with a bowl game then we are set!

Why would we do that?

I agree completely, hemy. And I think that's the plan right now for Swarbrick. I was told by a source at ND that he's trying to secure bowl tie-ins at every level. A 7-5 season is only made worse if the Irish end up playing in the Little Caesars Bowl against some no-name school. That's what Swarbrick hopes to avoid. With two years left in this cycle, he has time to get those deals done.