College football more fun when we could hate Notre Dame; now we must appreciate Irish | Opinion

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College football was more fun when everybody just hated Notre Dame.

Maybe you still do hate Notre Dame. Maybe you’re wrong about that. Maybe we’ve been wrong about it for years, with one caveat before we move on: We were right to hate Brian Kelly.

This isn’t about any Notre Dame football coach in particular. It’s about Notre Dame football, hard stop, and if the first sentence of this story seems hard, well, come on. You know what I meant. Or you will in a few moments, as we continue to discuss the Big Ten and the SEC, USC and UCLA, television money and the college football playoff and where one of the best sports on our national landscape went wrong.

The only thing right about big-time college football anymore, the only thing that’s been right about it for years, is Notre Dame. I can see that now, plain as the dollar signs in front of my face. The very thing we held against Notre Dame for so many years, its arrogance and exclusivity, its refusal to play nice and join a conference for God’s sake, is what made the Irish so right.

This is hindsight, of course, because in 1991 when Notre Dame hooked up with NBC, we hated the Irish. Unless you were a frontrunning Irish fan – rooting for Notre Dame football and oh, I don’t know, the New York Yankees – you were appalled at the arrogance of Notre Dame, setting itself apart from all of college football by getting a personal television network and remaining an independent.

What, Notre Dame, you’re better than everyone else?

Thirty-one years later, we have the answer:

Yes. You are.

Notre Dame to Big Ten: book it

The Irish won’t be an independent in football for long. No way, no how. You can see that too, plain as the dollar signs in front of their face. The money has grown too large to ignore, and Notre Dame can swallow some pride and join the Big Ten or get left behind.

Any idea how hard it is to be Notre Dame, anyway? No sarcasm or reverse psychology there. This is the kind of thing we couldn’t or just wouldn’t see for decades, back when big-time college football was divided into two camps – Notre Dame and everyone else – and we held the Irish’s haughtiness against them. Didn’t help when they employed Brian Kelly, but again, this is bigger than that guy. It just feels good to take another shot.

But Notre Dame was so great for so long, winning all those national titles and being given all those Heisman Trophies – some were earned by the name on the front of the jersey, not the back – that we got tired of it, you know? Enough with the Notre Dame talk. Enough TV. Enough hype. There were people trying to give Ron Powlus multiple Heisman Trophies before he reported to Notre Dame in 1993. Why? Because he was headed to Notre Dame. Enough.

In our distaste, our resentment for having Notre Dame football forced down our throats, we weren’t paying attention to how hard it is for Notre Dame to stay Notre Dame. The game has shifted in recent decades to warmer climates and speed, speed, speed. SEC teams have the edge in all of that, with superior weather and recruiting bases, and it’s not just SEC teams. It’s Texas and Oklahoma and Clemson and Florida State and Miami and even the schools in Southern California, if they’d stop hiring daddies boys like Lane Kiffin and Jim Mora Jr. and get a real coach.

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Notre Dame recruits kids to one of the coldest cities in America. Yes, fans of The Ohio State University, it’s true: You’re not exactly getting sunburned during college football season.

But it’s easier for tOSU to get players into school. Recruiting is easier for every great football program in the country for academic reasons. The only Power Five schools that hold their football recruits to the academic standards of Notre Dame are Duke, Vanderbilt and Stanford, maybe a few others. It’s not easy getting into Northwestern or Boston College or Wake Forest, either.

Damn near impossible to win big at any of those places, too.

Notre Dame’s academic standards for football aren’t merely in the ballpark of other elite schools; Notre Dame is sitting in the front row, best seat in the house, though the view gets difficult behind all those organic chemistry and mechanical engineering textbooks.

Despite the weather, the location, the academics, with college football exploding in sin around it, Notre Dame stubbornly tried to be Notre Dame. We didn’t notice that part of the story, because we were too busy hating the Irish for staying independent and having their own TV network.

Notre Dame sure seems likeable now, doesn’t it? And not just because new coach Marcus Freeman is a great guy, though I suspect he’s the reason this story even occurred to me. No way I’m writing these words if Brian Kelly is still there. Everyone has a line they won’t cross, a truly unlikeable coach they can’t support, you know? Brian Kelly was always mine.

He’s gone. So is college football, as we know it. The last big-time football school trying to win the old way – which is to say, the right way – is Notre Dame.

Let’s honor that, for as long it lasts.

Big Ten, SEC race to top – and bottom

For some people, sports can be so simple. I’m not always that way, often seeing the world in tones of gray, shaking my head in frustration at people who see black or white, right or wrong, when the world just isn't that simple.

Only here, it is. College football conferences – which is to say, the schools in those conferences – are stabbing each other in the back. They’re the bad guys in this story. They’re wrong.

Texas and Oklahoma didn't just leave the Big 12 for the SEC; Texas left Texas Tech, and Oklahoma left Oklahoma State. Those schools are joined by state education systems, but Texas and OU valued the SEC’s beachfront property over state loyalty.

The Big Ten didn't just take USC and UCLA from the Pac-12. The Big Ten formed an alliance, a partnership, with the Pac-12 and ACC less than a year ago for the sole purpose of standing up to the ruthless, back-stabbing SEC – then made the most breathtakingly ruthless move in the sordid history of conference realignment, stealing its alliance partner’s two most important schools.

Understand, when the Big Ten betrays the Pac-12, or the SEC steals from the Big 12, it’s not just one conference gutting another. Same goes for the ACC pushing Big East football to the brink of irrelevance by taking Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College in the mid-2000s, and finishing the job by taking Syracuse and Pittsburgh a decade later.

It’s not just one conference stealing from another, a palatable way to look at things, because it means we can get mad at conference entities, or individuals we’ve never had a rooting reason to like: conference commissioners.

No, this is worse than that. These conferences, those commissioners, are doing the bidding of their university presidents and athletic directors and coaches. Those are the men and women in charge of your favorite university, the actual human beings turning college sports into “The Hunger Games” or “The Purge.”

By staying independent, Notre Dame has stayed above the fray. Granted, Notre Dame had a built-in advantage other schools didn’t: Being the foremost Catholic school in a country dominated by Catholicism in the 1940s and ‘50s, when college football was joining Major League Baseball as this country’s most popular sport.

Notre Dame didn't join a conference because it didn't have to join a conference. Florida State, Penn State and Miami, football schools that dominated as independents, joined conferences in the early 1990s. TV money was changing the game, and there was safety in numbers.

Notre Dame didn’t need numbers in the early 1990s. It had NBC.

But things have changed. Notre Dame receives about $25 million annually, total, from NBC ($15 million) and its connection to the ACC ($10 million). Meanwhile, SEC and Big Ten schools stand to receive between $80 million to $100 million annually when their next TV contracts are negotiated.

Notre Dame has no choice now. Its contract with NBC expires in 2025, and while extracting itself from full ACC membership in other sports won’t be cheap, the Irish will be able to afford it by clearing $100 million a year in the Big Ten.

Notre Dame is one step away from joining the bad guys in the Big Ten, which means college football is nearing the end of its innocence. Won’t be long now.