Notre Dame to ACC in everything but football

No, the one thing Purdue brings to the series is political goodwill from Indiana lawmakers (PU is a state school).

ND of course is not a state school and does not receive direct funding from the state, but the Indiana state legislature could make life a lot less enjoyable and a lot more difficult for ND if it saw fit under the right circumstances.

I could see something like the Indiana political poohbahs demanding a deal to keep Purdue on the ND schedule (maybe switching off to IU once every three or four years. IU football would probably love a home game with ND once or twice a decade).

Sparty has no comparable leverage. If ND was going to keep either Michigan school on the schedule, it would have been U-M, which overall is a much much more prestigious program.

 

Purdue has no such leverage.

 

Purdue and IU joining forces well might (in any case they have more potential leverage to use on ND than MSU, which has none whatsoever).

And Notre Dame has very very little political leverage in Indiana -- a ton of state residents basically look at ND as a private school run (and mostly attended by) upper-crust out-of-staters which basically just sponges off the hospitality of the state.

 

I disagree with the author's premise that Michigan won't miss the rivalry. It's the third-most-anticipated game on the schedule every year, behind Ohio State and Michigan State for the obvious reasons.

They've played 28 of the last 34 years. 20 of them have been decided by a TD or less.

It's a pretty big deal that this series, which took forever to get going again, is done after 2014.

And there's no realy reason for it. If you are scheduling 11 games and eight are claimed (5 ACC, USC, Stanford, Navy), there's no reason why Michigan can't occupy one of the other three spots and ND still can throw in two other opponents of their choice.

And if ND is worried about locking in a slot, then play a home-and-home in 2017-18, then take the next two years off, then two back on, etc.

 

Very good friend of mine played college baseball at UNO....and his first-born son's name.......Maverick.

 

And Michigan State has a much longer-standing rivalry with ND that Michigan does. That carries a lot of weight with the decision-makers in South Bend.

Notre Dame could very easily keep Michigan on the schedule if it wanted to but it clearly doesn't want to do that.

In 2015 they have ten games scheduled - three with ACC teams. Add the two required ACC games and they could still make room for Michigan by dropping UMass.

In 2016 they have 10 games scheduled but only need to add one additional ACC game so there is still room for Michigan.

2017 would be a problem as they still need to add three ACC games & USC to a schedule that has eight games listed already. But they've got a game with Temple that could be bought out.

That gets you to 2018 when the scheduled two-year hiatus was supposed to kick in.