Rockne's Roundtable

He also conveniently forgets to say that we get the 1.3M annually in exchange for getting less money if we should make a BCS Bowl. We used to get all 14M from making a BCS Bowl. Clearly some flaws in the article, but the overall point is correct, whether we like it or not.

IrishWon

People

not media

tend to support

a program which

graduates it 's players with meaningful degrees.

King,
I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I don't agree with your last sentence....anymore. College football isn't nearly the geo-centric sport it used to be. There are fans of every program scattered across the US now. College fans are becoming much more like NFL fans in that a lot of the *major* programs have followings in many places. People are able to pick teams now that are not just in their own backyards because the teams are on TV a lot these days if they are winning. For instance even Los Angeles I see lots of Texas, Florida and Oregon fans driving around. Much more than in the past. That is what i am talking about when I say the landscape has changed a bit. We no longer have the national fan base we once did, or at least we are not the only ones.
I know none of us really like this. We want the monopoly on national fan base and want to believe that our program has national appeal above all others, but I am not sure believing it makes it real anymore. Even if *I* wish it did.

IrishWon

IrishWon,

I'd agree that there are some other schools that have a national following, but those followings are not nearly what ND has had and still has today. But my point wasn't really meant to be comparing us to everyone else so much as it was meant to highlight the lack of real issues for sports writers to discuss in the offseason (unless there's a high profile investigation going on or something like that). Every single year, it never fails, we get these articles that simply speculate about the relevance of ND football. And my main point was that as things are now, there are only two relevant teams during the bowl games - those playing for the national title. Changing to a four-team playoff simply makes two more teams relevant and doesn't affect the other teams one way or the other. This writer was simply looking for something to write about that would be a bit juicy/interesting/controversial to get people talking, but his main premise is wrong.

The article is on point... and the fact fans dont get ND had become irrelevant is hilarious to me...But ND did that to themselves ...truly if you cannot see the landscape of college ball has completely changed then you are missing the point...

I agree, IRISH, ND must win.

Conferences, bowl game-takes, playoffs. None of it matters if you win. The goal is still to be ND -- though, it may be, by this time, an impossible task. Like the US economy ever again being what it was before October 2008. That boat has probably sailed, and ND's may have departed even earlier.

But I don't think Kelly was hired for the purpose of ND joining a conference. My sense is that they were once again going to try to get back to the CFB summit as ND on its own terms. I don't see where any of that has as yet been scrapped. It may be a fool's game they're playing, but I think that it's still the game plan.

Once you start talking about adjusting to the new landscape of CFB, there is an implicit assumption that ND must do so because it can no longer mount an all out frontal attack for the NC and ongoing dominance. Again, that may prove a winning argument, but I don't think the white flag has yet been hoisted.

Either way, though, it's a moot point. Either ND will claw back to the top on its own terms under Kelly, or it will not. If it does, they can configure CFB any way they want, but ND will still be ND and retain its prerogatives.

If ND fails under Kelly, then it will have the choice of either marginalizing itself as a semi-irrelevant independent, or join a conference and morph into ND basketball. Good, but don't ever expect a cigar.

This will be resolved, but we're just not there yet, despite what some feverish scribe short of things to write about may think of the subject.

if we win, and keep winning, this conversation goes away. you start going 11 or 12-0, and you have the power to make you're own choices. we've lost that by being a mediocre 7-5, consistently.......

Risk, I decided to be optimistic about this one. I'm too pretty to develop frown lines at my age. Besides, the best part of optimism is it's free, and I'm as frugal as they come.

All those factors you cite contribute to my optimism, even the ones that look like obstacles. I really do think we're close to the tipping point.