09-12-2012, 08:47 AM
Pete Thamel of SI says Stanford games are priorities for ND officials: http://goo.gl/v6ftH
As a fan, I'm kind of bored of playing them. ND fan schadenfreude is among the best in the nation, but we can do that without playing them (though much more fun when it's your team administering the beating). But I'd also prefer to see some different faces from time to time, and with two of our nonconference games spoken for every year, variety is not terribly high. From a business perspective, though, hard to imagine many games can top ND. So I suspect we'll keep it.
Re: Stanford leverage--I would guess ND would be just as happy playing kal or UCLA every year, maybe even UW. But for a lot of obvious reasons we're #2 on the West Coast list. (SC will be kept as a game...forever.)
As a fan, I'm kind of bored of playing them. ND fan schadenfreude is among the best in the nation, but we can do that without playing them (though much more fun when it's your team administering the beating). But I'd also prefer to see some different faces from time to time, and with two of our nonconference games spoken for every year, variety is not terribly high. From a business perspective, though, hard to imagine many games can top ND. So I suspect we'll keep it.
Re: Stanford leverage--I would guess ND would be just as happy playing kal or UCLA every year, maybe even UW. But for a lot of obvious reasons we're #2 on the West Coast list. (SC will be kept as a game...forever.)