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Forty-four years since they last met, the Iowa-Notre Dame football series will remain on hiatus for a lot longer
ESPN’s Brett McMurphy reported this morning that Notre Dame will join the Atlantic Coast Conference for all sports except football, and will play five football games per year against ACC teams.
Which some could construe as watering down the Fighting Irish’s football schedule, but I won’t go there. Oh wait, I just did.
Since all news is local, does this affect the Big Ten? No. If ever there was a serious flirtation between Notre Dame and the Big Ten, it ended years ago. Commissioner Jim Delany almost sounded dismissive of Notre Dame when the subject was broached by reporters in recent years. Not dismissive of Notre Dame as an academic institution, mind you, but of the possibility the school might reconsider joining the league.
Delany issued the following statement on Wednesday:
“Today’s announcement by the ACC that Notre Dame will join the conference to compete in all sponsored sports with the exception of football was not a surprise. Both the Big 12 and the ACC have openly expressed an interest in adding Notre Dame to their conference under such a condition.
“The announcement by the ACC is further indication that the tectonic plates underlying conference affiliation are still warm. As always, we will continue to monitor the landscape.
“We are very pleased with both our current conference membership and our conference structure.”
Oh, those tectonic plates.
Fewer fights with the Big Ten on the Irish's horizon
The lone way this affects the Big Ten is it may knock down the number of football games Notre Dame plays against Big Ten teams. The lone Big Ten game that matters to America this week is Notre Dame at Michigan State. Next week in primetime, Michigan is at Notre Dame. Last week, Purdue played at Notre Dame.
Given their proximity, it’s unfortunate that Iowa and Notre Dame haven’t met in football since 1968, and perhaps never will again unless they’re somehow thrown together in a bowl game. But as Stephen Wright noted, you can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
The Hawkeyes and Irish played each other 24 times. Notre Dame leads the series, 13-8-3.
After next Saturday’s game against Central Michigan, Iowa will have played Mid-American Conference teams 21 times since the last time it played Notre Dame. That’s also unfortunate.
After it grabbed TCU and West Virginia to get back up to 10 members, the Big 12 indirectly let it be known that the only school it would truly be interested in adding would be Notre Dame. With blockbuster media rights deals with ESPN and Fox about to go into effect, the league isn’t going to be slicing the pie even further unless a new addition could make it worthwhile. Name someone who would be a likely candidate who fills that bill.
There isn’t anyone. Florida State and Virginia Tech are staying put in the ACC for sure now. That league made a great stabilizing move with its Notre Dame deal.
Notre Dame would have been a fantastic addition for the Big 12. But the concept of the Irish joining the Big 12 was always just that, a concept.
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ND would KILL Iowa most years. We should consider ourselves lucky.
i will agree ND is going to water down their schedule. ND would rather be in a conference they can dominate each year, than join a B10 conference where best they will be is 3rd fiddle. they want all the perks and protections of being in a conference, without having to pay the price to be in one, nor share in the spoils. Let’s hope the ACC gives them a little karma when the ACC does well in bowl games, ND goes no where, and NBC drops their TV contract. Then instead of getting a revenue share from the BTN, they can get exposure on some East Coast UHF channel. (i know they don’t have UHF anymore, but you get the point)
Matt:
No, Notre Dame wouldn’t KILL Iowa most years, and certainly wouldn’t have in the last five years. When was the last time Iowa got “killed?” It went from the eighth game of the 2007 season to late in the 2011 season without losing a game by more than single digits.
Iowa beat Michigan last season, and Michigan beat Notre Dame. Iowa beat Michigan State in 2010, and MSU beat Notre Dame that year. Iowa beat Michigan in 2009, and Michigan beat Notre Dame that year.
I know you’re down on Iowa, but when is the last time Notre Dame had a better record than 8-5? Answer: 2006.
Brian Kelly’s a capable coach, and Notre Dame will probably be a formidable team as long as he’s there. But until it hits juggernaut status …
Notre Dame would kill Iowa. Really? You must not have been watching the Irish for the last 10 years. They have been instrumental in some Heisman races as USC can affirm to by giving up tons of yards to guys like Reggie Bush, but killing Iowa I don’t think so. You must be one those guys with a 30 year old Notre Dame jacket that say “National Champs” circa 1980. Notre Dame means next to nothing to today’s kids. They know it as the place where “Frodo’s gardener” kicked an extra point at.
ND lost its luster years ago – only no one told their fans and NBC. Once Nebraska joined the B1G, I lost all interest in ever seeing ND join the conference – and I wasn’t too excited by the potential of them joining anyway.
OK. i somewhat anticipated the spanking on the ND comment. point well-taken. I’m not one of those guys wearing an ND jacket reliving the Lou Holtz days. perhaps the part i should have worded differently was ‘kill us most years’ and change it to ‘kill us this year’. I think Kelly is going to do good things at ND, but i also don’t see ND going 11-1, 12-0, or even 10-2 most years. i think there is too much parity in college football today, and as we’ve seen, anybody can beat anyone on gameday. Outside of the Big Ten league schedule, Iowa doesn’t go out of their way to schedule the USC’s, Alabama’s, Florida’s, Miami’s, LSU’s, etc, of the football world. ND does. I can remember when Iowa had UCLA, Nebraska, and PSU on the schedule back when two of those teams were not league opponents. I think that built some strong Hayden Fry teams. Shortly thereafter, it seems Iowa couldn’t drop the ‘tough’ non-con games fast enough and replace them with the UTEPs, Louisiana states, etc. Although we’ve had some good seasons since that time, it jsut seems we’ve been shorting ourself.
I never saw ND as joining the Big Ten. I think it would have been a good move for them, but i never saw it coming. They don’t work and play well with others, and ‘sharing’ (when it comes to bowl game revenue, TV, etc) has never been in their vocabulary. Plus, history has shown that ND over the past 15 years hasn’t had a real impressive record against the Big 10. If ND were in the B10, they’d probably have 3 to 4 losses a year – and that just wouldn’t be acceptable to ND fans. so i never saw them joining anything but a ‘weaker’ conference. and now that they will be playing 5 games a year against ACC schools, they are a member of the ACC in football in everyway BUT on paper. Why they still get the golden glove treatment is beyond me.