I take your point, but I’ll bet that Notre Dame is one of the largest employers in the South Bend area, if not the largest, so the City is wise to stay on good terms with the school. I think somewhere in the school’s mission statement is the requirement to keep the South Bend construction industry alive, what with all the new buildings on campus in the past 10 years and a new arena on the way.
Yeah, if effin’ Notre Dame was in a conference. Instead they steal the Big East bowl bids. It’s tough enough to be in this conference without having the fairest of fairhaired boys pinching your bowl bids without having to play in the conference (which would certainly help with TV ratings).
Speaking of TV ratings, screw ND for their TV contract.
And as stated before, screw them for their obnoxious fans and the continual verbal fellatio the media performs on them.
Well, yes and no. I’m intimately familiar with the Pac-10 bowl tie-ins, so let’s work through a scenario.
The Pac-10 champion goes to the Rose Bowl, period end of story. (Ignoring BCS championship implications).
After that, the Holiday Bowl (San Diego) gets first pick. Not necessarily the team with the best record – they get to pick next, from whichever Pac-10 team is remaining, and bowl-eligible.
Then the Sun Bowl (El Paso) picks.
Then the Las Vegas Bowl.
Let’s say USC wins the conference, but has fallen out of the top 2, and so goes to the Rose Bowl. Cal comes in second. However, Cal has been to the Holiday Bowl 2 of the past 3 years…the good folks at the Holiday Bowl may think that Cal fans may be a bit tired of the Holiday Bowl, and the feeling is mutual, and they pass over Cal and pick third place Oregon instead. Cal drops to the Sun Bowl, which says “thank you very much!”
On the other hand, maybe Oregon ends the season playing poorly, and their fans don’t travel well, and the HB thinks may get stuck with lots of empty seats…
So it can get much more complicated than favorite sons vs. stepchildren.
Here is an interesting take on why ND should join the Big 10 (11). Open Letter to ND, Big Ten.
Interesting, jsc. I’m curious as to your thoughts a few years back when the Rose Bowl picked Texas to play Michigan as opposed to Cal, which was the top P10 team available because USC made the title game. I thought at the time that Cal got screwed and if it was USC or UCLA in 2nd place they would have taken them over Texas.
:eek:
You just poked a stick into a hornet’s nest. 
Gigabytes of bandwidth have been devoted to this topic in Cal’s corner of cyberspace, and the name of Mack “Kneepads” Brown is still anathema.
I think technically the Rose Bowl was required to take Texas, as they had jumped Cal in the BCS rankings. They managed to do this despite not having played the last week, while Cal was winning. It had much to do with (in Cal fans’ opinion) Mack Brown shamelessly pandering for poll votes.
Sorry to pour salt in the wounds there. But I think the polls have the same bias as the bowls. Texas is definitely one of the chosen and Cal is one of the unwashed masses. Sure the coach’s lobbying helped but if the situation was reversed there’s no way Cal jumps Texas.
Ugh, that brings back an unpleasant memory-
Michigan, Purdue and Northwestern tied for the best record in the Big Ten my freshman year, and I think they all went 8-3 overall. Purdue went to the Rose Bowl, Michigan got the Citrus, and we got the shaft (Nebraska drove a steamroller over the team at the Alamo Bowl).
As a non-religious Penn State grad, I disliked Notre Dame ever since I first laid eyes on the sanctimonious “Touchdown Jesus” crowd…
Rudy just solidified things for me…
Who’s the wild-man now?
Well, having met huge numbers of Nebraska fans here in Austin, I have to say: they make EVERY other team’s fans look obnoxious by comparison.
Cornhusker fans are as passionate as English soccer hooligans, but they’re also the NICEST freaking people on Earth. That makes it hard to hate their team as much as I should!
Bear something else in mind about bowl games: they NEVER invite the most deserving team(s) unless they’re contractually obliged too. The sponsors of a bowl game simply don’t care about who’s better or who’s best. They care about filling up hotel rooms and restaurants, and they care about TV ratings. Ask them off the record, and they’ll freely TELL you so. Football means little or nothing to the Chamber of Commerce types who run the bowls. To them, a bowl is not a reward for a great season of football, it’s a ploy to gets tens of thousands of tourists into town during what’s otherwise a slow time of year.
Remember when the Sugar Bowl took 9-2 Nebraska over 13-1 Brigham Young? It’s because Nebraska fans travel in huge numbers to all their team’s games, and they spend a lot of money at bars and restaurants. One New Orleans VIP said, anonymously, “Look, a Mormon comes to New Orleans with a 50 dollar bill in one pocket and the Ten Commandments in the other. And he leaves town without ever breaking either of them.”
I hate bowl games, period. I want a playoff. I think the current system is stupid and unfair by definition (a championship should NEVER come down to anybody’s freaking OPINION!).
But as long as the system is what it is, it’s silly to hate Notre Dame and Nebraska just for having more fans than your favorite team. Change the system, and there will be no more problem.
The ND senior’s are Ty’s last group. The ND juniors are Wei’ first class of recruits.
Ty Willingham got a raw deal from ND, but he also quit on them long before he was fired. He’d stopped trying in his last season, and that shows in the poor quality of the seniors.
As for Weis… I don’t know yet if he can recruit. But he was hired by ND while he was still the Patriots’ offensive coordinator, and he had to keep working full time for the Pats through the post-season. He could only do part-time recruiting until February (when you’re game planning for the Super Bowl, phoning high school players becomes secondary). His current juniors are the stragglers he picked up while recruiting in his spare time.
I think he’s a brilliant X’s and O’s guy, but I have no idea whether he can really recruit, or whether he’s any good at teaching his system to young players. Right now, I suspect all he can do is start playing all his underclassmen, let them take their lumps, and hope they’re ready to shine next year.
I hope you’ve saved up some of that fine hatred for the other money grubbers who actually bolted the Big East and did it actual injury. You know, BC, FSU, Miami FL and VaTech. Then there’s Penn State, who snubbed the Big East to join the Big 10, and Syracuse, that’s always making noises about bolting…
Oh yeah, I have. But I don’t have as much hatred toward FSU because they were never in the Big East. I hate VT, Miami, and BC worse than ND. BC is easily the worst because they were bought off the cheapest. Plus, they were part of the lawsuit against Miami and VT until they got an offer.
Syracuse isn’t going anywhere, and the luster is fading from the Penn State rivalry since Joe took his ball and went home. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate them, but still not nearly as much as ND and the ACC teams.
Of course you’re right about FSU. My bad.
9/29 – Nice work today, Purdue.
Notre Dame now faces UCLA, Boston College, and USC.
0-8 is looking ever more likely.
I’m not quite ready to pity ND, though. Not yet.