JayDuck wrote:Terry in Crapchester wrote:
ND a punchline? Again,
Um yes. Among college football fans, Notre Dame has been a punchline for most of the past decade. To say otherwise is just being disingenuous.
Disagree. See Mgo's post above, which I think is closer to the mark.
And if ND really were a "punchline," as you suggest, I don't think their conference affiliation, or lack thereof, would receive anywhere near the attention it does on this board. Does anyone here really care if Army or Navy joins a conference?
ND's program has been down lately, but let's be honest here: a major reason why it's been considered down for so long is that standards and expectations at ND are so high.
No question about that. But that's the same for every program that falls into hard times.
Not true. Picking on the Pac-10 for just a moment, I would submit that most here would agree that Washington's program has fallen on hard times lately, and UCLA's, at least until last year, had done the same. Neither of those schools are expected to compete for a national championship by their fanbase on an annual basis.
There are only a handful of schools in the country where expectations are as high as they are at ND, and I daresay that the school you root for is not one of them.
And what does the school I root for have to do with this. What I said was hardly a flame against Notre Dame. Why go all board bitch all of a sudden?
I'm just pointing out that ND's fanbase sets the bar much higher than do most other teams' fanbases. By the standards of the fanbases of most programs in college football, the last 10-15 years that Notre Dame has had wouldn't be considered terrible. Like I said, it's not like we've been going 1-10 or 2-9 that whole time.
I just asked an honest question and one that you haven't answered. How long is too long and/or has the damage already been done?
Is 18 years too long? From a fan's standpoint, yes.
Has the damage already been done? I don't think so. As I pointed out in my earlier post, a number of schools have gone nearly as long, or in some cases even longer, between national championships.
ND still has an advantage from the TV contract, being the only school in the country whose home games are all nationally televised. And many of our road games are nationally televised as well. Your post proves nothing other than that the college football fan has many other TV options besides ND. But that was never in dispute. Moreover, many of the more recent additions to college football's televised schedule are games that don't directly compete with ND (e.g., weekday night games on ESPN or ESPN2).
The point is that that is not much of an advantage anymore, unless you are already a Notre Dame fan. I spend my Saturday's watching college football and pretty much never watch a Notre Dame game, unless its one that has a big impact which, in that case, would likely have been nationally televised with or without the contract.
We aren't talking weekday night games here. Back 15 years ago you didn't even have TNT, ESPN 2 or Fox Sports games to this extent. And now, ESPN Gameplan gives you games that compete with every timeslot all throughout the day on Saturday.
Notre Dame still has the biggest national following and, for them, I'm sure the TV contract is great, knowing that all their games will be nationally televised. Its just not a game that other people are forced to watch anymore. And really, anybody that is a fan of any decent team. Certainly any Top-25 team can watch their game pretty much every week too.
Since ND has had its TV contract, nobody has ever been "forced" to watch them. Other networks have had competing TV contracts for college football for the entire duration of ND's contract. You're correct in pointing out that there are more options now than there once were, but ND remains the only team to have all of its home games, and for that matter nearly all of its games, televised on a
national basis. Nobody has had a more successful program the last few years than USC, but around here, you'll only get to see USC on TV about 3-4 times per year, and one of those will be against ND.
The last time anyone was "forced" to watch ND was when ABC had the exclusive contract to college football and showed only one game per week. You're not old enough to remember that, and I barely am.
It's amazing to me that ND gets singled out for such a bad stretch of late, whereas none of these other schools ever came in for a similar standard of treatment.
That's just "woe is me" bullshit. USC got roasted when they were down. Miami is getting blasted at the moment and, if there is going to be consistant mediocrity, that will get worse and worse. It happens to everybody.
Since I answered your question, answer me this one:
Were you asking whether the damage had been done to Texas before '05? To USC or LSU before '03? To tOSU before '02? Etc., etc.
That's not to say, of course, that ND will win a national championship this year. We probably can't, and certainly can't without an awful lot of help. Nor does it look likely that we'll get anything better than a Gator Bowl bid (in a best case scenario) next season. But I wouldn't bet against ND at a minimum making a serious run at the national championship sometime in the relatively near future.
