Harvdog wrote:Terry in Crapchester wrote:
Any system that proports to crown a national champion, but which systematically disqualifies ND because ND is an independent, will never be accepted by college football's fanbase. Sorry you don't like that, but that's the way it is.
This is why we need a playoff.
Agreed. And to be honest, given that ND wants to remain independent, and the overwhelming majority of its fanbase wants to remain independent (especially the overwhelming majority of alumni, overwhelming majority of heavy donors and overwhelming majority of the most vocal section of its fanbase), I can't for the life of me figure out why we're not leading the drumbeat for a playoff.
A playoff renders conference affiliation moot. Strength of schedule is more important than conference affiliation in that circumstance, and only the most biased of ND haters would argue that ND's strength of schedule as an independent is inadequate.
Qbert wrote:why Homer Dame isn't in the Big 10whatever is only because Homer Dame NOW pulls a TV Contract; after years of denial of being Northwestern's replacement.
Years of denial of being Northwestern's replacement? You really don't know much about ND's history with the Big Ten, do you?
Fact: ND applied for membership in the Big Ten's predecessor conference in the 1920's and was turned down. The reason? They didn't want a Catholic school as a member of their conference. And at the time, that was pretty much ND's entire
raison d'etre: they weren't yet recognized as a premier academic university, and much of ND's football lore had not yet been written.
As a result, ND basically thumbed its nose at the Big Ten, and decided to build a football powerhouse within the footprint of the Big Ten as an independent. To borrow an overworked cliche from another forum, mission accomplished. Now, of course, the shoe is on the other foot -- the Big Ten wants ND but ND isn't interested in the Big Ten. Seems to me to be a bit of poetic justice, although that's just mho.
Here's another fact: ND actually came closer to joining the ACC in '03 than it
ever has to joining the Big Ten. This despite the fact that the ACC has no member schools within 600 miles of ND's campus, that ND has no natural rivalries within the ACC (Georgia Tech and Miami both were once annual/semi-annual rivalries, but both ended years ago), and that the ACC primarily services an area of the country where ND's fanbase is weakest (the South). Only the fact that the NCAA denied the ACC's request to hold a championship game with only 11 members, combined with the fact that the two sides couldn't agree on the timing of ND's entry into the conference, killed the deal (which turned out to be a blessing for ND, again imho).
Homer Dame should NOT get any special seeding; especially when you always play Navy at a neutral site.
It's been discussed in here before why we play Navy annually. Long story short, the answer is World War II. Colleges around the country took significant hits in enrollment during World War II, and all-male colleges, of which ND was one at the time, were particularly hard hit. The Navy established a sizeable NROTC Unit at Notre Dame, and as a result, Notre Dame was able to keep its doors open while a lot of colleges in otherwise similar circumstances had to close. As a result, Notre Dame plays Navy every year, as something of a debt of honor. I won't say that the series will never end, but if it does, it'll be on Navy's terms, not ND's.
As for the reason why Navy's "home" game is on a neutral field, the main reason is to accommodate ticket demand for ND's fanbase. In most years, Navy's "home" game is played somewhere in the northeast. The largest section of ND's fanbase actually resides in the northeast, so there's heavy ticket demand for this game from ND fans, and Michie Stadium just isn't big enough to accommodate that demand. Navy gets the home share of the gate for this game, so it's win-win.
INDEPENDENT Terry?
Nice STRENGTH of SCHEDULE!
Any unbiased (or even biased but realistic) person can see that Notre Dame's strength of schedule, even in a worst case scenario, is comparable to the median strength of schedule among teams in BCS conferences. In 2003, we had the toughest schedule in the country, beyond a doubt. Even last year, when our schedule took so much criticism, 6 of the 11 teams on the schedule were ranked in the Top 25 at one point or another during the season. Granted, a lot of teams on our schedule last year ended up having down seasons, by their own standards, but that wasn't foreseeable, and certainly it wasn't ND's fault.
If we joined the Big East, undoubtedly our strength of schedule would become weaker, not stronger.
