ND / Michigan TV Ratings Prove Game is Relevant

With five games against ACC opponets each year plus the annual Navy contest, semi-independent Notre Dame's new "footprint" is now East Coast centric with many of the universities they're now playing in areas with lower population growth (Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Boston College) that they also played when they were part of the Big East.

Add in two West Coast opponents per year (USC, Stanford), at least one or two Big Ten teams, one other home-and-home (Texas, Georgia) and a fill in the blank team (Rice, Army, Temple).  

Michigan, OTOH, plays in a confernce that spans from Nebraska to the same mid-Atlantic region that overlaps part of the ACC region Notre Dame will be playing in as a semi-independent.  Future schedules include non-conference games with SEC teams (Florida, Arkansas), Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, Brigham Young and five Pac 12 teams (Washington, UCLA, Oregon State, Colorado, Utah).  Even the non-Power 5 competition largely resides outside the Midwest with Hawaii, UCF, SMU, UNLV and AIr Force on future schedules (Cincinnati would be the exception to the rule along with Ball State).

One of the real benefits from the lapse of the Notre Dame series is that Michigan can become more national in terms of geography.  That's not to say UM-ND isn't a national rivalry or a game that gets big ratings, etc., because the opposite is true.  But now Michigan gets the opportunity to expand its non-confernce schedule footprint, even with just three OOC games starting in 2016.

What will be interesting to find out is if David Brandon is willing to have two home-and-home series with Power 5 Conference teams like he has set up in 2020/1 with Washington and Virginia Tech.  Because of the relatively short time frame for non-conference scheduleing, he might not be able to do it in 2018/9 when Arkansas is opening contest.  But there may be a possibility to pair up a second Power 5 team when Michigan plays UCLA (2022/3) and Oklahoma (2025/6).  

I suffer from OCD and didn't notice that.  

How exactly did you?  

who was alive when it happened.  

Notre Dame scheduled the home-and-home with Texas years before it joined the ACC.  If you look at old schedule lineups, you'll see that ND had UT and Michigan in Weeks 1 and 2 of the 2015/6 seasons.  Seeing that those games were put together in the BCS era, I thought it was pretty suicidal on the Irish's part to open those seasons with those two programs.

Because of that, it's no surprise that Swarbrick moved so quickly to cancel the series with Michigan so that the last game was in 2014.  Instead of playing the Wolverines the following Saturday after opening with the Longhorns in 2015/6, Notre Dame will now play at Virginia in 2015 and Nevada in 2016.

I wouldn't be so sure that Michigan and Notre Dame will resume the regular season series in any way, shape or form during the next decade.  UM AD David Brandon has home-and-home series with Virginia Tech and Washington in 2020/1, UCLA in 2022/3 and Oklahoma in 2025/6.  He's also stated that he has had no talks with Notre Dame for future games  and isn't planning on doing so either.

FWIW, Notre Dame is looking at pushing back the 2019/20 games with Texas because of the series with Georgia.  Swarbrick doesn't want to play both UT and UGa in 2019.   See http://www.fbschedules.com/2014/06/notre-dame-wants-to-postpone-2019-20…

As someone who works for a local television station and recently went through a similar issue with a cable company, telling the individual television station to "suck a bag of dicks" is misplacing your anger.

Cable and satellite providers often lowball television stations, hoping the threat of declining viewership entices them to take a substandard deal. The station claims DirecTV is lowballing them compared to other providers. DirecTV says they are trying to keep costs down for consumers. Considering WTHR is not a part of a giant media conglomerate and DirecTV is a large, multi-national corporation, I'm going out on a limb and saying DirecTV can probably afford it more than the station.

Especially since most local television stations operate on a very tight budget and the loss of substantial revenue from a cable provider could result in layoffs, cutbacks, etc.

and that, by default, means that their rivalry with Purdue is a National Rivalry.  This is real academic fraud!

Go Blue!

Honestly, I stopped listening to any rival's take on my school after a Spartan tried to convince me that Beilein's offense was something lifted from pick up church league basketball (he was serious and I'm not exaggerating).  

There are good rival fans out there.  There's just so much sifting involved.  

I assume you're referring to a fan.  

If it was Kelly, well I firmly believe he's a caricature of a notre dame football coach and I don't believe he actually exists.  

I actually think those were Kelly's exact words or close to it.  But in all fairness, you can't expect him to say "look, they beat us every year even when they suck and we are sick of being irrelevant by the middle of September so we have to take them off our schedule and play Wake Forest," can you?

That the top 5 games in total viewership (see OP) were all what ND would call "regional" rivalries which somehow, nevertheless, manage to attract a national audience?