I’m no fan of the Irish, I just find the historical naïveté amusing when it involves Notre Dame. This is a team that for the better part of a half century repeatedly attempted to join the Big Ten conference, starting all the way back in 1901, but numerous factors ensured they were repeatedly forced to be independent, and I won’t even blast all of the reasons that that was by the Big Ten at the time.
Now all of a sudden, people want to force them to do something in the opposite direction.
Often forgotten is that Notre Dame once had this same ACC deal with the big east for a number of years. I never cared that much for the big east because it was just a way for Miami to corner of the market on bowl money (the terms were highly favorable for them on football) and give them a mostly cupcake schedule to run up their unbeaten seasons as the dynasty began to fade.
Notre Dame is forced by not joining the conference to play in the first round, more of an offsetting enough penalty, if you ask me.
Besides, most of the folks here, demanding that Notre Dame join a conference continually disparage the ACC, so do any of you really think that I believe for one moment that if Notre Dame ran the table in the ACC that you would suddenly find them worthy because they won the very conference being disparaged?
I can get the point from folks wanting them to join a conference to basically equalize everything. I understand that argument. But let’s not pretend that if Notre Dame was sitting here with the same record today that folks here blasting them would suddenly find them worthy. They would “a poor strength of schedule” and everything else.
The simple fact is that Notre Dame has beaten 11-1 Indiana, 11-2 SEC champ Georgia, and 13-2 Penn State in a span of three games in three weeks, only one at home. They’re going to get killed by Ohio State, but let’s not pretend that Notre Dame isn’t a decent football team, certainly one of the 4-5 best based on what happened on the field and not in the minds of projectionist.
