Don't
feel bad if you're confused about who plays in which college athletic
conference these days.
It was one thing in 1978 when old-school leagues such as the
former Pacific-8 Conference became the Pac-10, and the Southeastern
Conference in '91 added teams. It was yet another in '93 when
the Big Ten added Penn State as its 11th school, and in '96 when
the former Big Eight absorbed some schools from the old Southwest
Conference to form the Big 12.
But now the Big East Conference, traditionally an East Coast
association, has teams from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin
and Kentucky, while the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) now extends
from Boston to Miami. Conference USA? Check your morning newspaper
to see if anyone has been added or subtracted today.
Amid all this, Notre Dame has been rumored in the media to be
joining the ACC for all sports except football, then joining the
ACC for all sports including football, then finally announcing
it was "staying the course" when in early November the Big East
added five schools.
That means Notre Dame continues to be a member of the Big East
for most sports other than football (though it remains eligible
for secondary bowl games through the Big East), and that leaves
the Notre Dame football program with its independent status.
For now.
Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White has read all the position
papers and heard all the impassioned philosophies about the importance
of maintaining Irish football independence. For those alumni,
fans and others who believe strongly that independence provides
Notre Dame football with its distinctive identity (in part through
its national scheduling philosophy and its 15-year television
contract with NBC Sports), there's no room for negotiation. Former
Athletic Director Mike Wadsworth heard a similar chorus when the
prospect of Notre Dame joining the Big Ten was debated in 1998-99
-- and he admits no subject prompted a more emotional response
than that one did.
With all that in mind, Notre Dame has promised to "continue
to monitor the landscape." Eeven though Notre Dame has existed
and generally flourished as a football independent for the last
90 years, ever-changing conditions suggest there's no guarantee
the same will automatically hold true for the next 90 years.
A brief history lesson may be in order to appreciate how the
terrain has evolved since 1980, when Gene Corrigan succeeded Moose
Krause as athletic director. The Irish football program, not far
from its 1977 national championship, thrived as an independent.
Access to bowl games came early and often. The introduction of
the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), however, was an unforeseen
development. Men's basketball, having made a Final Four appearance
in 1978, was riding the crest of success with eight consecutive
NCAA tournament appearances from 1974 through 1981 as one of only
a handful of independents. It was perhaps a sign of things to
come, however, when DePaul, Marquette and Dayton helped form the
Great Midwest (soon to become Conference USA), leaving Notre Dame
with late-season scheduling difficulties. Additionally, on-the-court
struggles, combined with recruiting and television challenges,
made the beckoning Big East Conference a perfect fit by the mid-1990s.
In 1980 most of Notre Dame's Olympic sports were fledgling at
best. Scholarships were minimal, if not nonexistent, for many
Irish sports. Those teams weren't expected to compete for national
titles (the perennially successful fencing program was an exception),
and there were no budgets to recruit or schedule nationally.
Now, while Notre Dame football intrinsically hasn't changed
all that much over these past 23 years, the college football landscape
has -- and so has the commitment to Notre Dame's 25 other sports.
As Athletic Director Gene Corrigan and successors Dick Rosenthal
and Wadsworth gradually increased the institutional commitment
to the various Olympic sports programs, Notre Dame outgrew its
independent status. That prompted a move (for most sports except
football and men's basketball) to the Midwest City Conference
(later the Midwestern Collegiate Conference) in 1982-83. The move
created a new series of meaningful goals that included league
titles, all-conference honors and guaranteed access to NCAA postseason
competition. Suddenly, Irish games took on greater importance
when the players knew first place was on the line. And, as Notre
Dame further ramped up its institutional commitments, the Irish
became the dominant program in the MCC, eventually outgrowing
that level of competition.
That dominance and the interest in creating better platforms
from which its basketball programs could compete prompted a move
to the Big East Conference for the 1995-96 athletic season.
Still, football remained independent. In fact, Notre Dame officials
went out of their way to suggest to the Big East that the league
should not accept the Irish with the expectation that the University
would bring its football program into the league at some later
date. Even when Miami and Virginia Tech opted last summer to leave
the Big East for the ACC and many in the media suggested that
Notre Dame join the Big East for all sports, commissioner Mike
Tranghese made it quite clear: That question had been asked many
times, but the Notre Dame response had been a consistent "no."
It is worth noting that Notre Dame has achieved at the highest
level during its time in the Big East. The Big East Commissioner's
Trophy for all sports now has gone to Notre Dame eight straight
years for men and seven straight years for women.
Still, the conversation about the prospect of Notre Dame football
joining a conference never completely goes away.
Some of the current dialogue is fueled by concerns about Notre
Dame's future access to the postseason through the BCS. Though
Notre Dame has been a signatory to that agreement since its inception
in 1998, there are no guarantees where the Irish will fit once
the current contract expires after the 2005 season. In fact, Notre
Dame could even be relegated to the status of current non-BCS
conferences that in 2003 required a team to reach a top-six ranking
in the final BCS poll to guarantee an invitation to one of the
top four bowls (currently Sugar, Orange, Fiesta and Rose). Champions
from the Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10, ACC, Big East and SEC all
currently are guaranteed BCS participation -- to go with two at-large
invitees.
In six seasons prior to 2003, Notre Dame three times qualified
for the BCS pool. It went to a top tier game just once (2000 for
the Fiesta Bowl), while its 9-2 and 10-2 records in '98 and '02
sent the team only to the second-tier Gator Bowl. In addition,
Irish qualification criteria have become increasingly tougher.
In 1998, Notre Dame needed only eight wins and a BCS top-12 ranking
to make the pool; by '99 that spot required nine wins. White can
only hazard a guess about where Notre Dame will fit into future
BCS puzzles.
Meanwhile, those who argue for a college football playoff can't
ever seem to push that format past the starting line, particularly
as far as university presidents are concerned (the last failed
attempt came this past July when a BCS Presidential Oversight
Committee again shunned the idea). No matter how the postseason
plays out, it's a long way from '94, for example, when Notre Dame
landed in the Fiesta Bowl with a 6-4-1 record, a mark that today
would be nowhere near BCS-quality.
All major conference members are handed BCS access, a package
of secondary bowl options, an eight-game league schedule and a
television package through their conference affiliation. At Notre
Dame, all those areas are left for the institution -- and White
in particular -- to negotiate.
The conference conversation also includes Notre Dame's position
on television and scheduling, two areas that have been critical
in differentiating the Irish (especially in recruiting). Notre
Dame fans have been spoiled by unprecedented exposure provided
to Irish football since the University signed the first of three
five-year agreements with NBC Sports to nationally televise home
games. With ABC, CBS and ESPN taking turns showing road games,
Notre Dame finished the 2003 regular season with a remarkable
streak of 136 consecutive football games televised by one of those
four networks.
Like the BCS agreement, the current deal with NBC runs through
the '05 season. If Notre Dame and NBC opt not to extend the relationship,
informal inquiries from other television heavyweights strongly
suggest there would be multiple suitors interested in filling
any potential void. However, conference membership could eliminate
a stand-alone deal for the Irish and could limit Irish exposure
on a comparative basis.
With no shortage of teams interested in playing the Irish, the
primary scheduling challenge is to create an equitable mix of
home and road games, in addition to the guesswork involved in
projecting future strength of various programs. This year's exceptionally
tough schedule, for example, was put together a decade ago when
most of the opponents were significantly less formidable than
their 2003 counterparts. On the other hand, any discussion of
football entering conference play would have to resolve current
schedules now under contract and extending almost a decade into
the future.
The financial benefits of football independence remain obvious
-- the Irish currently do not share any bowl revenue (even when
they play in a Big East-connected bowl), nor do they split anything
from the NBC television contract. Several years ago the college
football world stopped paying television rights fees to visiting
teams, so NBC does not pay opponents that come to Notre Dame Stadium,
nor do the Irish receive anything from televised road appearances.
Those two factors alone suggest conference membership would come
at a financial cost to Notre Dame athletics.
Yet another point of interest for Notre Dame, as the conference
discussion moves forward, remains an analysis of the non-athletic
characteristics of the institutions for any potential affiliation.
Do their educational missions, their academic standards, even
their sizes, dovetail with Notre Dame's?
The Big Ten's academic consortium (the internationally respected
Committee for Institutional Cooperation) drew plenty of attention
on the Irish campus, based on the shared library systems, student
exchange programs and other potential benefits to graduate and
research programs.
The Big Ten, for example, includes 10 large land-grant, state
institutions (plus smaller, private Northwestern). The ACC lists
privates Duke and Wake Forest (and soon-to-be Boston College and
Miami), plus publics North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia Tech,
which resemble and operate much like privates. The Big East features
a handful of private, religiously affiliated institutions such
as Villanova, Providence, Seton Hall, Saint John's and Georgetown,
yet none of those play Division I-A football.
If Notre Dame's current footprint is deemed to be somewhat Midwest
based on geography alone, might an ACC relationship expand that
footprint to the entire Eastern Seaboard, where one-third of the
nation's television audience exists? Would the Irish be better
off as one of 12 (in the Big Ten) or one of 14 (assuming the ACC,
now at 12, would add an extra school after Notre Dame)?
Another benefit of conference membership might be an invitation
to the prestigious AAU (Association of American Universities),
a group of 62 top research institutions -- including, for example,
all 11 in the Big Ten, four in the ACC (Duke, Virginia, North
Carolina, Maryland) and three in the Big East (Rutgers, Syracuse,
Pittsburgh).
Maybe the most complicated -- and yet fundamental -- question
remains this one: How much do or should academic and administrative
issues measure against athletic components?
It's worth noting that Notre Dame lobbied unsuccessfully for
Big Ten membership a number of times up through the middle of
the Knute Rockne years, before settling on a course of independence
now considered sacred to some.
Some 80 years later, might ever-changing conditions be ripe
to address the complex subject of conference membership again?
There's a difficult decision in the offing.
Stay tuned.
* * *
John Heisler is an associate athletic director at Notre Dame.
(January 2004)
