(07-19-2017 04:00 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(07-19-2017 03:06 PM)TerryD Wrote:  That goes against ND's whole philosophy and stance on this issue.

ND wants a national schedule and the flexibility to schedule schools from every P5 conference.

What you propose would not allow that.

ND does not want to be "regionalized" by an eight or nine game conference schedule unless forced to at gunpoint.

I know that people want to find new and interesting ways for ND to join a football conference but ND won't unless it is forced to by its program becoming so degraded that no broadcast partner will offer them an individual contract or if a champs only playoff is established.

It will only join a football conference against its will and if forced by outside events, never by its desire to do so.

It has zero desire to do so. Everything ND has done since it joined the Big East as a partial member in 1995 has been designed to keep its football program out of the clutches of any conference.

The marginal "enticements" of getting to play BC and Pitt every year or a some more TV money are irrelevant to ND's position on this issue.

Here again are Jack Swarbrick's recent comments:



Indy Star interview with Jack Swarbrick (7/14/17):


Q: Switching gears, what would it take for Notre Dame to join the ACC full time in football?

A: You can always weigh some circumstance that would do it, but we don’t think that way and we are very comfortable with and focused on our independence because of the things it does for the university, not for us. If we didn’t have a broadcast partner, that would be one thing. But we have a great relationship with NBC and look forward to that continuing. I don’t foresee any change in philosophy which would ever cause us to do it.

[On the first day of ACC media days Thursday, conference Commissioner John Swofford was asked this same question. He said Notre Dame joining the ACC as a full member is “not a point of discussion” between the university and the league. "There wasn’t an expectation that at some point in time Notre Dame would ask for full membership in football,” Swofford said. “That is not a point of discussion at this given point in time. Obviously, if Notre Dame reached the point where they wanted to have that discussion, we would readily sit down and speak with them about that."]

Q:Have you found that not having a 13th game or winning a conference is hurting Notre Dame as it pertains to the College Football Playoff?

A: There will be years where not having a conference championship works against us. We understand that, we factor it into our calculus. But, given the schedules we’re building, I’ll be very comfortable arguing most years that our 12 games compare favorably with everybody else’s 13. When you say a 13-game schedule is superior to our 12-game schedule, you have to compare all the games. We’re building schedules that I think will stand up to that comparison well. They’ll be very tough to navigate. No one will ever accuse us of backing in with the schedules we’ve built for the future.

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/col...467734001/


As you can see, this is not even a sports issue for ND, but rather an institutional one.

Right, but we're just talking hypothetically. And after all, things can change.

Right, I gotcha.

We could also all spontaneously turn into amphibious flying kangaroos with pontoon-like lower appendages....hypothetically. :)