Lol, Notre Dame

Why does anybody besides Purdue (vis a vis their exposure with their annual football series with the Irish) care about anything Notre Dame does in this day and age?

This is a football program which has won 2 bowl games in the last 18 years, and one of those was when Mr. Pinky Ring Himself, Jimmy Clausen, piloted the Irish to an epic Hawaii bowl win.

I'm glad they're not joining the Big Ten because Notre Dame obviously never had the heart, and if there's one thing the Big Ten doesn't need, it's another program with middling football talent.

Maybe it's because I was born in 1986, but I don't fathom how the ACC would let somebody like the piddling Fighting Irish punk them like they did. They're going to let the Irish join the conference in every sport except football?

I guess that last part is only partially true because they're forcing the Irish to play five ACC opponents per year on the grid-iron. Though, judging by the terms alone, you would think Notre Dame was the multi-millon dollar conference at the negotiating table.

It was Joe Paterno who proposed Big Ten teams stop scheduling Notre Dame until they joined the conference. It may have been his last good idea, and now that the Irish have finally (and totally) spurned the Big Ten, I think it's an idea which is worth re-examining permanently. The Big Ten shouldn't be a platform for Notre Dame exposure in the Midwest.

If Notre Dame is looking for exposure in football hotbeds like Connecticut and New York, then they have that right.

The only reason I wanted Notre Dame to join the Big Ten is because the idea of Ohio State kicking the shit out of them on an annual basis was something that excited me. Seeing as that has been ruled out, then I'm thankful the Big Ten let Notre Dame walk, especially if those were Notre Dame's terms all along.

Good riddance, I say, and I hope Michigan and Michigan State scrape their series with Notre Dame immediately. If anything, this move shows how much Notre Dame valued those series to begin with.

Let them go play five ACC cupcakes and the service academies every year; it's nothing more than a recipe for mediocrity... which is all that's been getting cooked up in South Bend for the last 25 years anyway.