The push for conference expansion doesn’t seem to be either slowing down or making any more sense. And at the end of the day, it might just end up enveloping Notre Dame.
So goes the lament of Lou Holtz, the famed Notre Dame football head coach who in 1988 led the Fighting Irish to their last national championship. Notre Dame is the center of much attention and speculation in the latest chess game concerning conference realignment and expansion.
For the Big Ten and the SEC, and to a lesser extent the ACC, Notre Dame is the biggest prize. Not just for what it means on the field as well as the court in terms of athletic excellence, but off the field with its massive national following. Notre Dame brings a windfall to whatever conference it joins.
Holtz, a revered voice in South Bend, spent one season in 1968 as an assistant coach with Ohio State. He doesn’t think that Notre Dame, one of a handful of independents in major college football, should join a conference.
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But it may be inevitable that they end up there.
“I don’t think Notre Dame should join a conference,” Holtz said during a segment on The Crowd’s Line.
“For the first time, there is a possibility. The way this conference alignment is going, what Notre Dame always wants to do is play for a national championship in football. That’s why they joined the ACC in all other sports, so that they could have access to the national championship games for example women’s basketball, men’s basketball, baseball, etc.
“In order to do that, the ACC said you have to play five conference games a year. You don’t enter into the conference race but that’s why Notre Dame has to play those games. But if you end up with two major conferences, etc. and say that the national champion will come out of these two conferences then I think Notre Dame will be forced to. Do I think it’s a good thing? No, I don’t.”
With a massive new television deal and geographic continuity, Notre Dame would seem most likely to land in the Big Ten – were the storied program to make the leap and join a conference.
Holtz spoke with Mark May, the former collegiate star at Pittsburgh who had a strong NFL career that included two Super Bowl titles and a Pro Bowl selection. The duo, who used to be popular analysts on ESPN, have a weekly segment on The Crowd’s Line.
(Holtz predicted an Ohio State win over Notre Dame on Saturday, for what it is worth)
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In the latest dominoes to fall in the reshaping of the college sports landscape, UCLA and USC are set to join the Big Ten. In a move clearly about television markets and revenue, the move of the two Los Angeles universities to the Big Ten makes the conference truly coast-to-coast.
It might also point towards the Big Ten further expanding along the West Coast.
“It’s not all about money. Any time you have UCLA and Southern California join the Big Ten…how about their women’s gymnastics team traveling to Rutgers? That’s going to be difficult. There was a time you set up a conference because you were geographically pretty close, you had the same academic objectives, you had the same athletic objectives,” Holtz said.
“That’s not the case now, it’s all about TV money and who gets the most households to tune in. I think it’s ridiculous. Where’s it going to end? Probably with two major conferences.”
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