The Bell Tolls for Thee, Irish

By Jacob Shoor
SouthernPigskin.com

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Notre Dame as a member of the ACC, with its football a five-eighths member, is a fairly serious threat to the Big Ten.

Back in December, after Maryland, led by a Big Ten-trained new president, apparently violated state law in an attempt to find quick cash for its fiscally irresponsible athletics department, I wrote an article titled "Notre Dame's Gamble." The gamble referenced is the Irish trying to hang on to semi-independence in football as long as possible. The reason it is a gamble is that all of the Big Ten's history since the rise of the Irish under Rockne, including adding Maryland and historically hapless Rutgers, is, to some degree, about quarantining the threat posed by Notre Dame.

And that means that the Big Ten will go to virtually any desperate length to prevent Notre Dame from being situated in such a way that the Big Ten could be diminished in any way.

Notre Dame as a member of the ACC, with its football a five-eighths member, is a fairly serious threat to the Big Ten.

First, we need to make certain that we grasp the importance of the ending of the previous sentence. Notre Dame football is no longer independent. A sport sponsored by a college that is independent does not have a conference schedule games for it. If a conference schedules games for a school's sport, that school's sport is a member of that conference. The ACC will schedule five games per year for Irish football.

Ergo, Irish football is a five-eighths member of ACC football.

After World War II, the Japanese elites who would be trained to run their nation anew had to repeat this assertion: "the emperor is not a god." A new mindset facing and accepting reality had to be instilled.

Likewise, Notre Dame football fans need to start chanting: "Irish football is not anymore, and never again will be again, independent."

The Big Ten is fully aware of that fact, and that is what terrifies it. The simple fact is that Big Ten football is dull and plodding and decidedly inferior to SEC football, in excitement produced outside the midwest as much as in quality of play. The Big Ten knows that it is possible that the ACC with Notre Dame, which remains the sport's largest drawing power, could position itself as the nearly perennial second best conference in the nation, and that would further bury Big Ten football.

The Columbus Dispatch has reported that Ohio State president Gordon Gee informed the university's athletics council in December that Big Ten expansion talks are "ongoing." Gee is quoted as saying he thinks there is indeed a movement toward only three or four 'super conferences,' each with 16 to 20 members. He said that the Big Ten is continuing to look to the east and the south.

Obviously, the Big Ten, which remains the wealthiest conference, does not need to expand in order to remain viable in fiscal terms. That the league has four of the nation's ten or so most important football powers historically, three of which average more than 100,000 per game, more than suggests that Big Ten football will remain a major force in the sport, rarely less than the second most important force overall, even if it can never significantly cut the gap that SEC football holds over it in terms of quality of play.

But the Big Ten is not going to leave the college sports world alone. It never has. The Rose Bowl was closed because the Big Ten, easily the wealthiest and most politically powerful conference then, wanted it that way; the Big Ten wanted exclusive right to claim its champion would play in the 'Granddady of them all,' thus the most important bowl.

The Big Ten history declares that the Big Ten acts, always, to attempt to thwart competition in order to make the Big Ten the de facto king of college sports.

The Big Ten requires at least one of two things from future expansion in order to re-position itself as unquestionable high king of college sports. The two are adding Notre Dame and moving into the South with at least a pair of academically elite schools that have large and very successful athletics departments.

The only way for a person to doubt that the Big Ten wants both is to be ignorant of the Big Ten's history, as well as to be ignorant of Jim Delaney's never waning drive to have everyone laud him as the smartest man in any room. Delaney's ego is such that he would lead an expansion drive just to prove he has the ability to get what he wants.

And he would disrupt every Big Ten rivalry, except Ohio State-Michigan, in order to strike at both Notre Dame and the SEC.

That means that Notre Dame football fans, much sooner than later, will be cheering for a team that is a full member of either the ACC or the Big Ten, because the only other alternative is to be a football lone wolf in an era in which conference scheduling will become absolutely paramount while the Irish must be a member of a non-major conference for other sports.

Most Notre Dame football fans remain determined to have their beloved program be an island. The best of them harbor such determination because they think that Notre Dame football became what it is because it has always been independent. But they are wrong. Notre Dame became what it is because it was blackballed from the Big Ten and thus had to play a non-midwestern schedule, one that emphasized the East coast. It is a schedule that is not filled with midwestern teams, that features schools of all sizes and types, with a special emphasis on the East coast, that made Notre Dame football what it is.

Then there are the nastily arrogant Notre Dame fans. They have blind faith that no matter what swirls around them, no matter who gets gored, ole Notre Dame football will be just fine because it is too big to be hurt, too big to care about the whole landscape, too big to need friends, too big to take care of friends.

But even 17th century poet John Donne knew that no man is an island, entire of itself. Notre Dame football could have twice as many national championships and Heisman winners as it does, and it could not stand alone, could not be a successful island as long as the Big Ten continues to use all its vast wealth and political capital to force Notre Dame to join or be reduced in stature relative to all sports.

The game plan for the Big Ten is to prevent Notre Dame allied with the ACC from further revealing how boring and weak Big Ten football is, which over time might begin to gnaw at the Big Ten's status as undisputed richest kid on the block. That can be secured only one of two ways. The first is to have Notre Dame in the Big Ten. The second is to so weaken the ACC that Notre Dame's partial football membership would be worthless.

The second would be achieved if the Big Ten could snare North Carolina and Virginia. They are the two most prestigious state universities in the South, and each has a very wealthy and successful athletics department. UVA and UNC would keep the Big Ten contiguous, which has always been a major consideration for the conference, while poking the SEC in both eyes.

There is only one way for Notre Dame to make certain that the Big Ten cannot hold its head under the water until it begs for mercy: Notre Dame must make its five-eighths football membership in the ACC full.

If it does not do so, Notre Dame can count on the Big Ten to cause trouble ceaselessly, hoping to destabilize the ACC and then to swoop in and take Notre Dame and a few other pieces it would love to have (UNC and UVA certainly, Duke, perhaps Georgia Tech and Boston College and a few others if they help it sign up ND, UNC, and UVA).

There is no safe island, and no middle ground. John Donne knew that the hard way. He was raised Catholic in Elizabethan England, when that often meant a death sentence, after terrible torture, if the outlawed faith became public knowledge. His older brother was arrested for harboring a Catholic priest, and after being tortured he gave up the priest, who was broken on the rack, hanged until almost dead (slow hanging, not snapped neck hanging), and then brought down and disemboweled while alive. John Donne's brother died in prison. The young poet knew all the details, and the fear drove him to become Anglican, to accede to the demands of the Elizabethan state.

No man is an island. The bell is tolling, and while many may assume it is tolling for the likes of Boston College, Pitt, and Wake Forrest, as well as the service academies, elite schools with small ticket-buying football fan bases that the lowest common denominator fans would delight in seeing eliminated from major conference status, the bell is actually tolling for Notre Dame. That is so because Notre Dame has the power to act, to defend, to save.

Notre Dame football acting selfishly to try to remain an island, unconnected and therefore not responsible to help anyone else, will not escape diminishment. It could become as pitiable as self-serving John Donne writing anti-Catholic pamphlets for pay and agreeing to be ordained an Anglican chaplain.