Re: New Story: Trip to Notre Dame shows the difference between Irish and Clemson

Letterman [257]

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Posts: 170

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Re: I have to ask a question.

May 30, 2017, 6:49 PM

The main reason that Notre Dame won't fully join the ACC is that they have spent the last 120 years building an independent program, and despite the mediocrity on the field in the last 25 years, it's working very well as it is now. Joining the ACC would change it a great deal, in ways that are hard to predict.

The team has a number of traditional rivalries. They had to abandon some of these to commit to five ACC games. If they had to cut their non-conference games from seven to four (and maybe three), they would have to abandon most of them.

When they joined the ACC, they were playing Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue pretty much every year. They were also playing USC, Stanford and Navy every year. And, they regularly scheduled home-and-homes with top-tier teams like Ohio State, Texas and Oklahoma.

They had to drop the every-year games with the three Big 10 teams to fit the five ACC games into the schedule. What do they have left?

They couldn't drop Navy even if they wanted to. They consider that a debt of honor; if the Navy hadn't taken Notre Dame up on its offer to use the campus as a training facility during WWII, Notre Dame would no longer be here. When the then president asked the Secretary of the Navy how they could repay them, the Secretary asked them to play Navy every year. Navy will play Notre Dame every year as long as they want to.

With the exception of the war years in 1943-5, Notre Dame and USC have played every year since 1926. And the Stanford game has been played every year but two since 1988. ND-USC is one of the greatest rivalries in college football, and that's not going anywhere. The Stanford game could perhaps go away, but then they would only play on the west coast every other year, instead of every year. Those two games are important for their west coast recruiting.

So, if they joined the ACC as a full partner, their non-conference schedule would be USC, Stanford and Navy, plus one more (maybe). They have no trouble scheduling four other games every year, including games with top-tier teams like Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Michigan and Ohio State. It doesn't make sense at present to give up all those games to play three or four more ACC teams every year.

An important reason that it doesn't make sense is control of their strength of schedule. If they wanted to schedule six of the top teams across the other conferences in a year, they could do that, especially since scheduling Notre Dame instead of Old Dominion will increase another team's playoff chances. If they played eight games in the ACC, they wouldn't be able to do that. Even if they did play FSU and Clemson every year, which they wouldn't. Nothing against the ACC, it's a great conference to be a part of, and it has been getting better every year. But if you reduce the pool of available games from everyone in college football to the teams in the ACC, you are losing flexibility.

So, it really isn't so much about the money and the NBC contract (they would probably get more money by joining, in light of the most recent TV deal the ACC has negotiated). It's about the identity and the brand. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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Yeah, it sort of does, doesn't it? But I don't think that Swarbrick is saying that the existing weight facilities are subpar. Just that they will upgrade them in accordance with changes in the science surrounding physical development as those changes occur.

One of the things about Notre Dame that's probably different from Clemson is that they like to add on or remodel existing facilities when they can, rather than build new ones outright. Newer isn't automatically better. (I don't mean in any way to disparage your new football complex by saying this. It looks like a great facility.)

The $400 million "Crossroads Project" is a good example of that. The current Notre Dame stadium opened in 1930, and it didn't change at all until they expanded the seating in 1997. Like most college campuses, the campus is several times larger now than it was then. So, while it was built on the edge of the campus, the stadium is now right in the middle of it.

Rather than tear down the stadium and build a new one a mile away, they decided to build around it. They just built a combination of a student center and a number of academic buildings, all connected to the stadium. That allowed them to cost justify a major upgrade to the stadium facilities, as well as justify having the stadium right in the middle of campus when it only gets used a few times a year.

I'd say that idea is pretty unique as stadium upgrades go. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out.

Clemson has certainly outplayed Notre Dame in the last few years on the field. Perhaps this is because, as you seem to be suggesting, Notre Dame doesn't have the commitment to state-of-the-art facilities that Clemson has, which makes it harder to attract the best players to the school.

And perhaps it isn't. We'll see you in 2020, when y'all stop by.

New Story: Trip to Notre Dame shows the difference between Irish and Clemson

Good stuff David, thanks and Go Tigers!!!

Re: Good stuff David, thanks and Go Tigers!!!

Re: Good stuff David, thanks and Go Tigers!!!

Re: Good stuff David, thanks and Go Tigers!!!

Re: Good stuff David, thanks and Go Tigers!!!

The coolest thing about going to a game at Louisville...