Notre Dame Football: Ranked No. 1, Again

Not that it matters, since they'll settle it on the field, but why Florida state higher than Florida? Fla beat top 10 teams in lsu and south Carolina and lost only to another, Georgia. Fsu's best win is Clemson, and lost to a pretty unremarkable nc state team.

 

1. It's not the NBC contract. It's the underhanded way that they secured it.

2. They have been on probation. Look up Kim Dunbar.

 

I'm guessing it had something to do with the USC-Notre Dame game date being set in advance of the Pac-12 expansion.

 

I forget the circumstances. Were they the first to break away from some larger contract?

 

I would like to add that the murderer coach isn't helping matters.

 

Yes. They broke ranks with the CBA in 1990:

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/06/business/notre-dame-breaks-ranks-on-tv-football-rights.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

 

OK. I remember it now.

Seems almost quaint in today's era.

 

The conference also wanted to spread the "rivalry" games around the schedule for TV purposes instead of playing them all on the last weekend of the season like they did before they expanded.

That said, there's no reason the final weekend couldn't be all divisional match-ups

 

All the Pac-12 rivalry games are this weekend, except for the Big Game, which was played in October because Cal refused to play over TG weekend. So instead of Stanford playing UCLA in Oct., it was moved to this weekend. Cal is idle.

USC-UCLA is always the week before SC-ND in the years that game is played in Los Angeles. ASU and UA have always played over Thanksgiving weekend.

 

And the Irish play at Stanford the years they don't play at USC. Reportedly, all the P12's rivalry games will be rotated.

 

They could move the rivalry games up to the weekend BEFORE Thanksgiving and give teams the option of an open date on Thanksgiving weekend.

Or move the conference title games back one more week (since we have about a month empty anyway), if it wouldn't interfere too much with final exams.

 

The Irish are one of those teams that it's good for college football when they're good, but that doesn't mean I'm going to root for them...

This year, if anyone other than Florida, Bama or LSU wins the title, I'm happy.

Bama vs. Notre Dame for the national title would get ratings we haven't seen in quite some time I'm guessing... I don't know if it would be bigger than USC-Texas, but I would guess it would at least be the biggest since then.