Notre Dame continues to value its independence---To Hell With Notre Dame!
Though I despise ND, I have to admit Swarbrick has made some pretty strong arguments for why ND should remain independent, not least of which is because it makes them a unique brand identity. He goes a little off the reservation when he compares some of the things that he wants to do with Fortnite and NFTs. Its not that they are crazy, its just that for a school that talks so much about its mission and what it is 'fighting for' in its TV ads during football season, this kind of cold decision calculus comes across as money-grubbing and hypocritical.
To Hell With Notre Dame!
Notre Dame is a school
They sometimes play football. They also occasionally play basketball. We're waiting for word from our inside sources to determine if they do anything else.
Back to you Tom
“purchase NFT tickets that include real value beyond their seat for a game”
At first I thought this is Dave Brandon level stupid but there’s a sucker born every minute. If he can get Irish fans to spend real American dollars for literally nothing than good for him I guess
August 4th, 2021 at 10:17 PM ^
Hey. No one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American public.
August 4th, 2021 at 10:26 PM ^
FIFY
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people" ---PT Barnum
August 4th, 2021 at 10:44 PM ^
That actually makes a whole lot more sense than whatever it was I tried to construct.
August 4th, 2021 at 11:18 PM ^
Yes, if you underestimate their stupidity, they are smarter then you give them credit for.
PT Barnum once sewed the body of a fish to a dead monkey and called it a mermaid. People came in droves to see it. He didn't go broke.
He knew perfectly just how smart the American people weren't.
August 4th, 2021 at 11:23 PM ^
FIF*Y*: *HL Mencken
This is the correct Mencken quote:
”No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
August 5th, 2021 at 11:17 AM ^
Good find! The interweb kept pointing me toward a site that attributed it to Barnum.
August 5th, 2021 at 10:23 AM ^
H.L. Mencken was one of America's most loved and feared iconoclasts.
August 5th, 2021 at 10:26 AM ^
I have a strong suspicion that Swarbrick couldn't actually describe the value of an NFT in this context but he's smart enough to repeat it so people who think they're really smart about investment opportunities will flock to the idea and giving him money.
August 4th, 2021 at 10:04 PM ^
Notre Dame probably isn't considering a further alignment with any conference right now in the slightest, and why would they (other than they come to realize how annoying it is to the rest of college football)? They have two playoff appearances under the 4 team format, and I'm assuming they think the playoff expansion would actually lend itself even further to their independence.
Until it's demonstrated that not being aligned with a conference greatly diminishes their shot at a playoff appearance, there is no chance they're going to change anything. And even then they'll go down kicking and screaming.
August 4th, 2021 at 10:08 PM ^
Which brings up a question, instead of this race to consolidate in superconferences should more traditional blue bloods consider the independent route to control their own destinys?
I don't have strong thoughts one way or the other. Just wondering what others think.
August 4th, 2021 at 10:17 PM ^
It's an interesting thought. The NBC deal is what makes this all make sense for ND. They're the only show in town nationally on the largest network in America, which I think very few other programs would be able to negotiate, especially state funded public universities. I think if it were realistic for other blue blood programs to go that route, some of them would seriously look at it. But the reality is, I don't think its realistic for any other program today except Notre Dame.
August 5th, 2021 at 12:15 AM ^
Texas and USC would be two that could do it based on size of fan base and power relative to their conference. I actually think it makes more sense for Texas to go independent than join the SEC since they'll obviously be contributing more than their share to the lesser teams in the conference.
One problem is what to do with other sports that need a conference. ND got the ACC to accommodate, would USC be willing to drop basketball and Olympic sports into the WAC or similar? Maybe the AAC would be happy to have Texas for remaining sports.
Between ND, BYU, and a few more independent teams they could solve the scheduling issues by creating a pseudo conference round robin.
I think you're right that the NBC deal is key for ND to remain independent, but with Peacock, maybe they have capacity for another team? USC would fit since they play on the West Coast, every Saturday could be Notre Dame-USC doubleheaders we would all hate watch. Network TV will remain important for a long time but it will ultimately diminish, I think, as everything goes to streaming.
Michigan is too tied to the Big Ten institutions to consider leaving, most likely. The OSU rivalry is too important and would be diminished by not being a conference game. They've left before though so I am not ruling it out. Who knows what the future holds at this point.
August 5th, 2021 at 10:54 AM ^
I was ready to challenge your notion that the USC fanbase is so large, mostly based on my preconceived notion that a private school probably doesn't have that huge of an enrollment and thus probably has a much smaller alumni base compared to the large public institutions*. But I was wrong. At last check, USC had 44,000+ total students enrolled. I had no idea.
It leads to the question: what are some other large, private institutions? BYU is definitely one, and I'm sure they have a very loyal alumni base. Any others that I'm missing?
*Notre Dame is the obvious outlier here in the private school realm. It has smallish to medium-sized enrollment numbers, but a large national fanbase that has presumably grown around its historical religious affiliation.
August 5th, 2021 at 11:44 AM ^
https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/rank/private-colleges/largest-enrollment/
Assuming those numbers are legit, USC and BYU are the only large private universities in Power 5 football (depending on how you classify BYU, I suppose) until you get down to Syracuse and Northwestern and below them, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Miami and Wake Forest.
There are the Ivies and pseudo-Ivies, the East Coast urban schools like NYU and Boston U with no FBS football. They're not really relevant to this.
Liberty is an interesting one. They have huge enrollment and a strong religious connection like BYU and ND. They're new on the scene but it wouldn't surprise me if they maintained a presence on a level similar to BYU. Big enough and good enough that they're in the gray area between P5 and G5.
Thanks for pointing out how big USC is. I honestly didn't know myself. Like you, I assumed they were closer to Notre Dame's size. I did not realize it was basically as big as Michigan.
USC definitely isnt a national fanbase
August 4th, 2021 at 10:04 PM ^
Fuck notre dame!
August 4th, 2021 at 10:22 PM ^
In a general football fandom sense, I’m happy ND is sticking to their independence guns. It’s a long-standing and meaningful tradition for them, and those seem to be on the chopping block these days for a lot of schools. To me, the rituals and traditions are a huge part of what makes college football special, even those of the teams I loathe.
August 5th, 2021 at 10:29 AM ^
I don't have a bit issue with them staying independent if they were consistent with it but then last year they sorta joined the ACC so they could have a chance at making the playoffs. That's why the whole "it's a tradition" argument feels hollow - they only do it because it gets them more money and they can have some more flexibility with scheduling games against team they tend to destroy. Like, the fact they play all three service academies is as much a financial boon for them as a means of promotion and marketing as whatever "debt" they feel to those schools from playing them almost a century ago.
It’s hard to use the covid year as an example of their independence being a hollow tradition. If I recall, they wouldn’t have had much of a schedule to play without joining the ACC, as many conferences canceled their non-cons. They did it to better insure their games would actually be played.
August 4th, 2021 at 10:57 PM ^
Apparently, the penalty Notre Dame would have to pay to move its other sports out of the ACC before 2036 is more than $100 million. And they've launched their own streaming service.
It's just not going to happen. If the ACC gets them for football (and obviously they want that badly), that's life. But odds are good they'll remain independent for a long time.
With ND and the ACC schools (even larger financial handcuffs) off the table and the logistics of raiding the Pac-12 (why would any of top prizes there leave?) unrealistic, I think the Big Ten is just fine with 14 schools.
August 5th, 2021 at 12:26 AM ^
Sounds like ND vs everyone.
Notre Dames decision makers would rather make money than ever win another national title. This is a bizarre thing for anyone who is a fan of sports to understand, but I guess it just means NDs brain trust were ahead of the curve for how everyone else in college sports would think
As opposed to how Michigan operates?
Speaking of ND, I live just North of Indianapolis in an area with a lot of older ND fans. The decision by ND and NBC to exclusively stream the home opener against Toledo will surely make them mad.
The Big Ten schools should just stop scheduling ND. The only thing that allows them to remain independent is the willingness of other teams to play them. I like the idea of a Big Ten-PAC Ten alliance of sorts where teams in each league play a couple teams in the other league each year (together with a directional school tune up game) and their league schedule. Have a playoff for each league champion, and they meet in the Rose Bowl, as someone suggested. ND can play the service academies and ACC schools. See how they like not having USC, Michigan, MSU, Purdue etc. on their schedule.
August 5th, 2021 at 10:34 AM ^
Exactly - as an independent, they're only as good as the opponents who schedule them. If they insist on holding onto playing Army, Navy and a weak BC team and declining Stanford program every year and everyone else is locked up into super-conferences, then they'll find themselves on the outside looking in. Tradition is one thing, but the entire landscape of college football is rapidly changing, and they can't just rest on their past glories and treat themselves as 'special'. They'll have to change with it. In fact, it's already ridiculous they have a special carve-out for them in the CFP, especially considering in some years their schedule can be very weak. If they want to continue as an independent, I think they should at least be required to play 13 games each season.
August 5th, 2021 at 11:14 AM ^
That's one thing that the article mentions. If ND makes the new playoff, they are the only teeam that is not allowed to have a bye because they don't have a championship game and the proposed rules states that earn a bye a team must have played in a championship game. Swarbrick points this out as a point of pride, saying that no one can then claim that ND would have played fewer games than anyone else.
August 5th, 2021 at 11:14 AM ^
That's one thing that the article mentions. If ND makes the new playoff, they are the only teeam that is not allowed to have a bye because they don't have a championship game and the proposed rules states that earn a bye a team must have played in a championship game. Swarbrick points this out as a point of pride, saying that no one can then claim that ND would have played fewer games than anyone else.
August 5th, 2021 at 11:22 AM ^
I think it makes sense that ND is an independent in football, given their history and footprint. B1G teams not scheduling them won't ever change that and would be just petty. Additionally, I'd rather not play them every year just so we can have variety on our NC schedule plus keep it special when we do play them.
They would miss USC and maybe Michigan but that's really it. They would have no problem getting teams to replace the other big-10 teams. This year they have Purdue and Wisconsin, they could replace them with any ACC team not on their schedule or a BYU, Okla who they've played in the past.
Smart man. Keep sneaking into the Playoff and getting all the $$$ and media noise associate with it, without playing a semi-pro team every year in the regular season.
To their credit they beat Clemson in a miracle game last year, without T. Lawrence, but still a big program win.
Avoiding OSU, SEC and even the PSU's and Wisconsins of the world every year is a smart strategic move.
UM would have made the playoff a few times as well without the OSU roadblock. Getting our doors blown off in the playoff like ND seems to be our program ceiling assuming we could get there.
They have chosen the correct path.
August 5th, 2021 at 11:48 AM ^
LSU has been blocked by Alabama as much or more than M and OSU. Yet the one time they broke through, they made it all the way. If you're good enough to get in the playoff you are good enough to win, it's a two game playoff and anything can happen.
Anything can happen sure but every year there's been one, maybe two teams, that the committee gets wrong and as a result you have all these blowouts in the semifinals and some blowouts in the finals as well. LSU was not just good enough to get in, like the ND teams that have been selected, they were the overall #1 seed and prohibitive favorite to win.
Fuck -- we should be independent too. F the B1G.
We could play BYU and Purdue every year and make the playoff. I'm down.
Swarbrick & Notre Dame are Smart.
What benefit is there to signing up with the Big Ten?
Less TV Money
Have to listen to B10 Leadership - Delaney was incompetent, Kevin Warren what has he done?
Less Control
Lose Identity
Good for them, I wish Michigan would go Independent! Think for themselves
NO COMMIES!!!
The start was ok, and then you went full WTF