Notre Dame to Big 12?

Submitted by Leaders And Best on

Chip Brown of Orangebloods is reporting Notre Dame is in talks to move their Olympic sports from the Big East to the Big 12 along with scheduling 3-6 football games against the Big 12 per year.

http://texas.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1377426

I hope this happens.  Their new conference rivals in closest proximity: Iowa State and West Virginia.  Good job Irish.

robbyt003

June 20th, 2012 at 5:01 PM ^

this is semi topic, but doesn't it seem strange we play ND every year in football, but never in basketball.  It seems like that would be a very even matched game year in and year out.  

CorkyCole

June 20th, 2012 at 6:12 PM ^

Part of the deal is that with football Notre Dame is independent, so they don't have a conference schedule.  You could kind of say Michigan is part of their "conference schedule," as is MSU and USC as well as others. 

In basketball, however, they are a part of the Big East and, therefore, have their own conference schedule.  Even though it's highly possible for ND & UM to play every year due to the non-conference schedule being decently large, it's still not quite the same situation as football. If they played all of their annual football nemeses in basketball every year, they'd only have maybe 5 interchangeable non-conference games on a given year.

tlo2485

June 21st, 2012 at 3:47 AM ^

in 2011-2012 we played ND in: baseball twice (1-1), beat them by 1 place in the Great Lakes Regional in Men's Cross Country (1-0), beat them in Football (1-0), Ice Hockey (3-1), M Soccer (0-1 OT), M Swimming (1-0), M Tennis L  3-4 (0-1),  W Golf L at ND Tourney (0-1), Softball W (1-0), W Swimming (1-0), W Tennis (1-0), Water Polo W 20-4 (1-0)....

 

 

So.... we do play them often in a lot of olympic sports... by my rough estimates (I'm sure I'm missing some), and we went 11-5 head-to-head. I would like to see more basketball series, though. Hopefully a rivalry can be born in lacrosse, because ND has some solid teams in both men's and women's.

Moleskyn

June 20th, 2012 at 5:02 PM ^

You might want to change the title to say something about Olympic sports only. As it is right now, it's a bit misleading. I assumed this was about football.

CRex

June 20th, 2012 at 5:07 PM ^

Makes sense in a way.  If a four team playoff evolves and it doesn't involve polls, it likely means that the SEC, PAC, B12, and B1G send their champions.  The ACC and Big East get frozen out (with some teams like FSU defecting to the B12 to get in).  

So Olympic sports to the B12 makes sense as it opens up some contact and keeps the door open.  If nothing else I'm sure ND is talking about it just so they can maintain some contacts there.

WolvinLA2

June 20th, 2012 at 5:41 PM ^

Again - not a real big deal.  If they ever play Oklahoma and Texas in the same year I'll care, but chances are they never will, so replacing Pitt, Syracuse and Rutgers with Iowa State, Kansas and Texas Tech still isn't much of a story.  I'm sure most of those seasons will be closer to the 3 than to the 6 anyway.  I highly doubt ND has a season where they'll play UM, MSU, USC, Texas and Oklahoma.  If they do, however, I'll love that season.

M-Dog

June 20th, 2012 at 10:02 PM ^

Yes, they're just moving across town.  They're not moving uptown.  They are trading their current Big East arrangement for the same thing, but with the Big 12 instead.  They will not schedule Texas/Oklahoma/(Florida State) every year.

It's kind of dumb on their part.  They sign up for potentially getting beat up by some Big 12 teams, yet they remain ineligible for the Big 12 championship, 

Now that the 4 team playoff looks like it will include at-large teams, Notre Dame is in the best position it has been in a long time.  An undefeated or 1-loss Notre Dame team, even against crappy competition, is always going to be seriously considered.  It's not fair, but that's how it is, selection committee or not.

They are jeopardizing that by walking away from their Big East cupcakes. 

 

coldnjl

June 21st, 2012 at 12:50 AM ^

I love this.They are the special team, and therefore NEEDS to stay independent in order to generate a National audiance. How is playing in the south and away from the East coast going to do that? Additionally, does any school care less about all non-football sports than ND. i feel bad for them. They are moving from a conference that made some sense for them (East Coast) to a conference where lacrosse and wrestling have to play in the Big whatever. The only sport that seems to win is baseball. All for preserving the Golden Dome.

 

*This hasn't happened yet, but I feel this will happen...too much smoke

Tater

June 20th, 2012 at 5:38 PM ^

ND has been able to use their independent status to cherry-pick an advantageous schedule for years now.  Any conference that wants them should simply stop allowing its teams to schedule them unless they don't join.  This couldn't be officially done, of course, but it could be "backroomed" or it could be a "strong recommendation."  

All the Big 12 is doing here, if they actually do it, is allowing ND to do exactly what they have been doing all along: gaming the system to their own benefit.  What's really sad for the is that, even with all of their cherry-picking, they haven't been able to get to their state goal of a National Championship since 1988.

If Notre Dame had been a truly elite program, it could have won at least three National Championships since then, simply on having a schedule that fools computers and pollsters, but is really easy if the team is good enough.

WolvinLA2

June 20th, 2012 at 6:32 PM ^

ND's schedule is artificially inflated by not playing any of the true cupcakes like we do.  On paper, teams like BC and Wake Forest look much stronger than WMU or UMass, but in reality they are all essentially auto-win games for a good team. 

If you played 2011 Penn State 12 times a season, you'd have the highest SOS in the country by far, without playing any elite teams, but Michigan would still probably go 10-2. 

Like we said above, MSU and Stanford had abnormally strong seasons the last few years.  If Oklahoma State or Baylor was a permanent team on your schedule, the last few seasons don't accurately show your long term SOS. 

wolverine_chemist

June 20th, 2012 at 7:06 PM ^

Ok but what elite teams have we played in the last 3 years? I would argue that we played none last year while nd played USC and Stanford who ended the year ranked 6 and 7. In 2010 i would say ohio but nd played a 12-1 stanford team that was also elite. They have played as many elite teams as we have the last 10 years. Also games against mediocre teams are not auto wins even if you are good, just look at iowa last year.

As far as your last point goes i'm not really buying it. Its not like they have played awful schedules every year until MSU and Stanford were good the last few years. They were playing very very good USC teams every year as well as florida state. also tennessee for a couple years. They had top ten strength of schedules in 04 and 05 and were close to top ten in 06.

I understand they play a lot of mediocre teams and I'm not saying they have these really hard schedules every year but I think they play consistently tougher schedules than most people give them credit for.

 

WolvinLA2

June 20th, 2012 at 7:43 PM ^

Agree to disagree then.  I agree that when Stanford is good, it makes their schdule stronger, but usually Stanford is one of their gimmes.  And although we haven't had as many USC-level elite games, we have more tough, loseable games every year than they have.  Teams like Iowa, Nebraska, MSU, ND, OSU and occasionally other Big Ten teams (or other tough OOC games like Alabama or our upcoming Pac-12 games) are all tough, loseable games for us. 

Nearly every year, about half of our games are games that most good teams could lose.  ND, OTOH, usually has 2-4 tough games, and the rest are teams like Navy and Purdue.

david from wyoming

June 20th, 2012 at 8:03 PM ^

 

Nearly every year, about half of our games are games that most good teams could lose.

 

BS.

 

ND, OTOH, usually has 2-4 tough games, and the rest are teams like Navy and Purdue.

 

You mean, we don't play Purdue as well? Your logic doesn't work here.

WolvinLA2

June 20th, 2012 at 8:38 PM ^

You think that first statement is BS?  I just listed ND, MSU, Nebraska, Iowa, OSU, and most seasons we play Wisconsin, PSU or another tough OOC game (like Alabama in 2012).  Those are all games that a good team could lose, especially since half are away, on average. 

Yes, we sometimes play Purdue (ND plays them every year, we play them 40% of the time).  I count them in our easy games.  The difference, is that instead of 6 Purdue-type games like we have, ND usually has 8-9 of those. 

WolvinLA2

June 20th, 2012 at 8:48 PM ^

By the way, there's nothing I like more than the internet guy who says, "you're wrong" but doesn't say why.  BOLD, sir. 

Looking at ND's 2010 and 2011 schedule, ND had USC, UM, MSU and Stanford, and a bunch of Purdues.  Yeah, they had that pre-meltdown Utah team in there, and Pitt who is probably better than Purdue but still not good. 

Think of a season where our OOC is ND and three nobodies, and our Big Ten schedule was MSU, OSU, Nebraska, and then 5 games against Illinois, Purdue, Indiana, Minnesota and Northwestern.  This couldn't happen with Iowa in our division, but you get the point.  This type of thing happens to us sometimes, but we talk about it like it's an unusually easy schedule.  This is ND almost every year.

phork

June 20th, 2012 at 9:33 PM ^

Yah because Navy hasn't been good the last few years.

Besides that, ND, USC and UCLA are the only teams who have not played FCS teams.  How'd Appalachian St. work out for ya?  Do not lecture about tough schedules because for every Air Force on ours there is an.....Heh look, Air Force on yours!  Lets not forget the directional Michigan Championship, have you ever played East, West, MSU, Northern Michigan Poly in the same year?

Lets look at last year.  Eastern, Western, SDSU, Purdue, Illinois, Minnesota.  And I am not including Nebraska (I don't think they are a decent team anymore).

I won't go so far as to say that either schedule is better than the next, but seriously.  Stop with the cupcake BS.

 

mgowill

June 21st, 2012 at 12:17 AM ^

Notre Dame will lose 6 games this year, fire their coach, and hire a WAC coach to return them to greatness.  Notre Dame should have joined a conference when they could have dictated money.  Now they have no choice but to sleep with Tom Hammond and his enormous head.