[82lsju]

Notre Dame has been able to field top notch athletic teams without any conference affiliation.

Yes, they do. In one major sport.  Yet they found it desirable or necessary to be a a conference for mens and women’s basketball and I think  all other major sports.  Wonder how much a network would pay for the rights to Stanford  Football? We know they wouldn’t pay $30. Million for all sports as part of a conference.NBC is reported to be paying Notre Dame $50m per year for football and tney get $17 M from the ACC for other sports.  So that’s $67m per year for athletic TV rights..about what the Big 10 will pay.

Notre Dame is an exception to every rule and probably the only one..but I did not think of their football program. I don’t think we are in the football class any more than I think they are in our academic class. But if someone would pay us even $30 million a year for all of our tv rights, we could look at going the independent route.  I doubt that’s out there or we would have grabbed it , but I don’t  know that.

I don't see their football schedule as truly "independent" given they play five ACC teams in football every year, and currently play us (we'll see if that changes after this year), USC, and Navy every year so they really only have to find four games a year.  And in those four games they seem to generally play a Big 10 team each year (Purdue this year) and one other power conference game (Texas A&M this year) and two others, like the mighty Miami RedHawks and the Northern Illinois Huskies (they probably regret scheduling them...) this year

of course even back when I was growing up in Ohio my vague recollection is that their "independent" schedule seemed to include a lot of Big 10 teams each year as well as Navy and often one of Army and Air Force.

[82lsju]

Notre Dame has been able to field top notch athletic teams without any conference affiliation.

Yes, they do. In one major sport.  Yet they found it desirable or necessary to be a a conference for mens and women’s basketball and I think  all other major sports.  Wonder how much a network would pay for the rights to Stanford  Football? We know they wouldn’t pay $30. Million for all sports as part of a conference.NBC is reported to be paying Notre Dame $50m per year for football and tney get $17 M from the ACC for other sports.  So that’s $67m per year for athletic TV rights..about what the Big 10 will pay.

Notre Dame is an exception to every rule and probably the only one..but I did not think of their football program. I don’t think we are in the football class any more than I think they are in our academic class. But if someone would pay us even $30 million a year for all of our tv rights, we could look at going the independent route.  I doubt that’s out there or we would have grabbed it , but I don’t  know that.

I don't see their football schedule as truly "independent" given they play five ACC teams in football every year, and currently play us (we'll see if that changes after this year), USC, and Navy every year so they really only have to find four games a year.  And in those four games they seem to generally play a Big 10 team each year (Purdue this year) and one other power conference game (Texas A&M this year) and two others, like the mighty Miami RedHawks and the Northern Illinois Huskies (they probably regret scheduling them...) this year

of course even back when I was growing up in Ohio my vague recollection is that their "independent" schedule seemed to include a lot of Big 10 teams each year as well as Navy and often one of Army and Air Force.