Rockne's Roundtable

I never saw this as a threat to our football independence at any time. The only way we relinquish that is if we fail to keep a conference home for our non-football sports, thus forcing our hand to join an all sports conference. ND football will always be welcome at the bowl table because of our drawing power for tickets/tv. The AQ conferences have already proven they cannot keep any school from gaining access to the BCS bowls/championship equation. If anything, the BCS era has improved access for those schools.

I agree, i would like us to have better access to other bowls besides the BCS games if we dont qualify. Lets see what happens.

How about the 4 Major bowls host the top 8 teams (use the BCS formula to figure out the top 8, That way the teams that play a tough schedule would get credit over guys that schedule cupcakes for the first games of the season). Have them scheduled 2 games on the Eve and 2 on New years Day. This will give us the top 4 winners. Put them in a semi & a final for the Championship.The bowls would rotate in who held the 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc. like in Basketball. The Semis and Final could be bid out to different cities like the Final Four. This way everybody gets some action.

Sorry to sound like a smartarse, but I just don't think there's much cachet to being an 8-5 team in a basketball conference. I think the simple answer is to win games, and the luster will be there, independent or not. Other issues will determine the need to join a conference, and I don't know enough about them to comment.