Notre Dame Schadenfreude thread

The B1G should go ahead and add ND and Stanford. Split football into 4 Divisions. You play your own and one of the other 3. Have semi-finals and a final. For other sports, you play everyone once, with one designated rival for a home and home.

-Stanford, USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington

-Nebraska, Iowa, MN, Wisconsin, Illinois

-ND, Indiana, Purdue, Penn State, Northwestern

-OSU, Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland, Rutgers.
people on here love to come up with ways to recreate magic that was the B1G West. semi-final would be 3 natl championship contenders and one little buddy who went 7-5 every year.
 

And now I'm seeing their AD will hold a press conference tomorrow and he stated this morning that the ACC has done "permanent damage" to the relationship.

Maybe they fit better with the SEC.
B1G is where they will land.
 

Beef or no beef, ND has been the beneficiary of a lot and it's simply poor sportsmanship at play here. There's really no excuse for this. It's almost like Scott Frost contending that his 13-0 UCF squad should have been declared national champs.
 

The B1G should go ahead and add ND and Stanford. Split football into 4 Divisions. You play your own and one of the other 3. Have semi-finals and a final. For other sports, you play everyone once, with one designated rival for a home and home.

-Stanford, USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington

-Nebraska, Iowa, MN, Wisconsin, Illinois

-ND, Indiana, Purdue, Penn State, Northwestern

-OSU, Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland, Rutgers.
Agree add them but no divisions.
 

people on here love to come up with ways to recreate magic that was the B1G West. semi-final would be 3 natl championship contenders and one little buddy who went 7-5 every year.
Little Buddy? There's something special brewing in Lincoln!

I get that it's a tad unbalanced currently if you believe Indiana will stay good/Wisconsin will stay bad etc. You could swap Illinois for ND, but ND would not go for that. I guess you could swap Illinois for Penn State too though it doesn't make a lot of sense geographically.
 









They get about $50mm/year from NBC

Every B10 team gets between $80mm - $100mm
I mentioned the exclusivity clause, and they don't want to share media rights money for football. I think they like having the weak schedule in football as much as any of that.
 
Last edited:

Notre Dame has 2026 College Football Playoff assurance and the schedule is embarrassingly favorable​


Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua laments the Fighting Irish had a potential College Football Playoff berth "stolen" by the selection committee, but doesn't expect there to be any legitimacy questions in 2026 and beyond. Bevacqua said Sunday language in a memorandum of understanding signed by Notre Dame last spring guarantees the Fighting Irish a playoff appearance if they rank inside the top 12 of the final poll.

In this scenario, Notre Dame would have been this season's final at-large selection over Miami. Notre Dame's playoff "assurance" for being ranked inside the top 12 doesn't go into effect until next season, according to Yahoo Sports. The Fighting Irish opted of bowl season altogether. Multiple sources confirmed to CBS Sports that the Pop-Tarts Bowl invited Notre Dame to play BYU and waited "several hours" before the Fighting Irish declined.

Notre Dame's 2026 scheduling will not win any awards, and should be one of college football's most favorable. Not all dates are finalized, but Notre Dame plays only three true road games — North Carolina, Syracuse and Purdue — and has neutral-site contests against Wisconsin and Navy.

The Midshipmen are the only team among those five that finished bowl-eligible.

 

Never is a long time, but I just dont see the Irish giving up the brand. They have been unique for 100 years. Independent. National brand. They are loved or hated - nothing in between. Play who they want. They join a conference and they have to answer to someone. They become just another team.
 



Notre Dame has 2026 College Football Playoff assurance and the schedule is embarrassingly favorable​


Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua laments the Fighting Irish had a potential College Football Playoff berth "stolen" by the selection committee, but doesn't expect there to be any legitimacy questions in 2026 and beyond. Bevacqua said Sunday language in a memorandum of understanding signed by Notre Dame last spring guarantees the Fighting Irish a playoff appearance if they rank inside the top 12 of the final poll.

In this scenario, Notre Dame would have been this season's final at-large selection over Miami. Notre Dame's playoff "assurance" for being ranked inside the top 12 doesn't go into effect until next season, according to Yahoo Sports. The Fighting Irish opted of bowl season altogether. Multiple sources confirmed to CBS Sports that the Pop-Tarts Bowl invited Notre Dame to play BYU and waited "several hours" before the Fighting Irish declined.

Notre Dame's 2026 scheduling will not win any awards, and should be one of college football's most favorable. Not all dates are finalized, but Notre Dame plays only three true road games — North Carolina, Syracuse and Purdue — and has neutral-site contests against Wisconsin and Navy.

The Midshipmen are the only team among those five that finished bowl-eligible.

A bit off-topic, but . . . Seeing that name Bevacqua, I can’t help but share one of the all-time post-game rants by Tom Lasorda going off on a middling MLB player, Kurt Bevacqua. A truly Jerry Burns category/level rant. If you’ve never heard it, take a couple minutes. Warning: explicit language.

Lasorda Bevacqua Rant
 

people on here love to come up with ways to recreate magic that was the B1G West. semi-final would be 3 natl championship contenders and one little buddy who went 7-5 every year.
Don’t think they’d do semifinals

The divisional imbalance wouldn’t matter with 4 because you’d play your whole division plus an entire other division.

So the gophers schedule in his scenario would be;
Iowa
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Illinois


The the entirety of one of the following three groups
Oregon, Washington, USC, UCLA, Stanford
Or
Notre Dame, Purdue, Indiana, northwestern, penn state
Or
Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan state, Rutgers, Maryland

That’s a good schedule every year.
Divisions would be for scheduling only.
Conference title game just between top two teams.

Or

If there are locked number of bids by conference…say the big ten gets 4….the big ten plays a 4-5 bubble game in place of the conference title game


Essentially in a 6 year cycle you’d have 2 scheduling divisions each year but they’d change each year. You’d get 4 teams every year and everyone else home and home in 6 years.


If you expand to 24 teams you can do an 11 game conference schedule with same setup. (I think this will happen if there aren’t at large births anymore)

West: UsC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Arizona State, Stanford

Midwest: Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, northwestern

Lake Erie: Michigan State, Michigan, Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State, Notre dame

Atlantic:
Penn state, Rutgers, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia Tech, North Carolina or Miami

I don’t think they’d go to 24 without increasing the number of conference games.

The divisions only matter for scheduling.
I bet they don’t even name them.

The schedule is broken. Everyone knows it. It’ll probably wait to get fixed until the next realignment.




I also think the discourse about the west is strange. The west helped the conference. The west propped up Mn-IA-WI+ one’s records (who the other team in the top 4 of the west was seemed to rotate)
The alignment didn’t hurt the east. The east had multiple teams win national titles. 4 different programs made the playoff. The teams helped by the east-west were all 7 in the west: the teams hurt by east-west were essentially Indiana maryland and Rutgers. Now that Michigan state is below average it would’ve hurt them too. But east-west was a good alignment for 10/14 teams.


Franklin liked to complain about it, but if there wasn’t east west he would’ve gotten fired faster. Rather than lose to Ohio State once he would’ve made some more title games and lost again. The year he won a conference title he would’ve had to beat Ohio state again in a division less setup.
 
Last edited:




Never is a long time, but I just dont see the Irish giving up the brand. They have been unique for 100 years. Independent. National brand. They are loved or hated - nothing in between. Play who they want. They join a conference and they have to answer to someone. They become just another team.
Have you not seen the rate of and number of changes over the past 20 years?
 

Never is a long time, but I just dont see the Irish giving up the brand. They have been unique for 100 years. Independent. National brand. They are loved or hated - nothing in between. Play who they want. They join a conference and they have to answer to someone. They become just another team.
It’s fine if Notre Dame stays independent, but they have to realize they will miss out on a conference championship auto-bid, which lessens their chances of a playoff slot.

They also shouldn’t be given special treatment and get a guaranteed slot if they finish in the top 12. Boos to the committee for letting both Alabama and Notre Dame push them around.

And what about BYU? They also finished in the top 12, but didn’t get a playoff slot. We don’t talk about them because they aren’t crying about it. And they took Notre Dame’s Pop Tarts Bowl slot. Go Cougars!
 


Maybe he's a smug, self-important asshole? That would be another ND box to check, but those are typically the alumni.

I have multiple connections to ND and can confirm, and we laugh about it. Not as bad as Michigan.

My moniker, incidentally, was literally inspired by the P4 college football fans I interact with. Fine people, mostly.
 

I personally think the blatant ESPN-SEC bastardization of the playoff is worse than any reaction from Notre Dame's end. I know this thread is about ND but the elephant (no pun intended) in the room is Bama
 




Top Bottom