So … Notre Dame chose to take its bat and ball and go home, eh?
A thousand pardons for mixing sports metaphors. The Fighting Irish (kind of a misnomer in this instance) have chosen to withdraw their names from any and all bowl considerations after losing out on a College Football Playoff bid.
There is so much that goes into making this a much juicer story than it should be. It can be summed up in two words: Notre. And Dame.
The university has an out-sized reputation and legacy, based partly on its success over the years. But that reputation is based equally, or close to it, on Hollywood embellishments, from Knute Rockne and George Gipp to Rudy. And you have to wonder whether that sense of entitlement has factored into the school’s decision to eschew the bowl season due to its perceived snub.
Of course, this cuts both ways. There’s just as much disdain for Notre Dame as there is worship. There’s the perennial complaint about the schedule, as well as the pushback resulting from the inordinate amount of attention focused on the South Bend university.
In the interest of full disclosure: I am a Notre Dame fan. Bigtime. And it’s not going to be easy to say some of the things I’m going to say here. But right is right … and wrong is wrong.
Let’s start by addressing the “snub.” Back in August, the Irish were on the wrong end of a 27-24 loss to Miami. Another loss, this time 41-40, occurred the following week against Texas A&M. After that, Notre Dame ran the table, winning 10 in a row.
Thanks to the usual convoluted math that defines these things, the Irish slipped out of the final ranking spot just in time for the final poll — with the Hurricanes sneaking in.
Convoluted math isn’t just confined to college sports. After all, the Lynn English football team won its league title this fall and wasn’t invited to the postseason high school tournament. However, the Bulldogs didn’t refuse to play in their non-tournament games.
This defies the time-worn maxim that losses in November count more than losses in early September. The Hurricanes’ last loss was Nov. 1 to SMU. The other one came two weeks earlier to Louisville. So, if I’m a Notre Dame fan, I’m wondering why a 10-game winning streak leading up to seeding day means bupkis.
Next, let’s discuss that ridiculously early Notre Dame schedule that apparently the Lynn Pop Warner teams could navigate. After years of debating this charge with many Notre Dame-hating friends, this seems to come down to one particular team the Irish play every fall — Navy. Otherwise, Notre Dame’s schedule doesn’t look any more or less daunting than anyone else’s. Some of those cupcakes on the lower end of the SEC don’t send fear up and down the bodies of anyone. And the Hurricanes had Bethune-Cookman on their schedules.
The annual Navy game came about as a result of a World War II arrangement where officer candidates could use the South Bend school for training. The deal helped keep Notre Dame afloat during a rough patch for the school. In return, Notre Dame promised to put Navy on its football schedule as long as the academy wanted to play.
This means that for honoring its commitments, the school gets penalized. One wonders how many other bully-cupcake arrangements are even half as noble as that one is.
Then there’s this: Each time the Irish have broken through to play in a title game, they’ve lost badly. Don’t think that wasn’t a consideration, too.
But the crux of the matter is this: If you agree to play by a set of rules, you really shouldn’t be allowed to turn your back on those rules if you don’t benefit from them in a given year. English played those three games. So did Classical a few years back when the same thing happened to the Rams.
It’s not the same, of course. Money enters the equation. But the principal is the same. You show up. You play. You don’t deprive your kids of the opportunity to participate in something special.
There’s no doubt that Notre Dame would have had a prime-time game, maybe even on New Year’s Day, against a real team (if that’s the worry). It could have been a great game. Actually, the best way to prove people wrong in a case like that is to play the game and win by 50 points just to show everybody.
Sorry, Fighting Irish. You’re my guys. But I’m penalizing you 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct on this one.
