What is Notre Dame "worth"?
The good:
Notre Dame has a massive nationwide following. They also have a ton of "anti-fans", people like me who don't like them. These "anti-fans", however, are almost as good as normal fans from a ratings perspective. Ie, one viewer is one viewer regardless of whether they are watching to root for or against Notre Dame.
An illustration of Notre Dame's draw:
I own a lot of Ohio State gear. However, I only own a VERY few shirts specifically commemorating specific individual games. The few of that type that I do own are tied to games that won an NC or got tOSU to a NC game. The exceptions are that I own a shirt for each of Ohio State's four wins over Notre Dame.
Their undergraduate academics are very good and would certainly be a credit to the B1G.
They have significant history with multiple current or about-to-be league members:
- ND's second most frequent with 92 games is USC
- ND's third most frequent opponent with 84 games is Purdue
- ND's fourth most frequent opponent with 73 games is MSU
- ND's seventh most frequent opponent with 47 games is Northwestern
- ND's eighth most frequent opponent with 38 games is Michigan
- ND's fourteenth most frequent opponent with 25 games is Indiana
- ND's fifteenth most frequent opponent with 24 games is Iowa
- Penn State (19), Wisconsin (17), Nebraska (16), and Illinois (11) have also each played the Irish at least 11 times.
Only Ohio State (6), Minnesota (5), Rutgers (5), UCLA (4), and Maryland (2) have not frequently played the Irish.
I remember as a kid in a Catholic grade school (1-8) one of the 8th graders singing the ND Fight Song in the locker room. Sort of neat, but we were in Dubuque,
Iowa. I was a Hawkeye fan, but lived in a Catholic community with a lot of Notre Dame people. Notre Dame played Iowa in Iowa's rivalry week for about 20-years, and after 1968, the series suddenly stopped.
In 1963 the game was canceled. One of my now buddies who is a mentor, was in law school then. He went to the Iowa Memorial Union and obtained a game day program from a big stack of programs since after JFK was assassinated the game was called off - it was supposed to have been an Iowa home game. The program cover hangs in his office, along with his season ticket.
After I attended an FSU @ ND game I found that the same cover of the Iowa game day program from 1963 for a game that wasn't played, also hangs in Notre Dame Stadium, but it is bigger. I took this photo in 2018 as I left an FSU disaster. As much as I hate Notre Dame, it does suck losing your rival. It is sort of like, your brother vacated, and never said good-bye.
Notre Dame is worth a lot for the Big Ten. I would like to think Iowa is worth something to Notre Dame, but it isn't.
46222709_10212179490391458_6851366997771419648_n by
Mark Roeder, on Flickr
