John Heisler may be a charisma-challenged bureaucratic jerk, but he wouldn't say this without having the explicit or implicit consent of the PWB. You don't last for 35 years in a job like his without knowing how to keep your ass well covered.

This is an obvious trial balloon. It needs to be shot down, and shot down hard. The only thing that will do that is the fear of significant revenue loss. So that's the real question, would scheduling a I-AA opening opponent cause a loss in revenue?

Sadly, I don't think so.

Every other year we are now stuck with 3 road games. Add PU/MSU (1), USC/Stanford (1), and if we want to maintain 6-5-1 or 7-5 (Navy ensures 5 road games every year with this schedule set), we can't book any home-and-home deals . Will our AD settle for 6-6 or 5-7 in some years to allow for booking a quality home-and-home, or can he rework this ACC deal for 2-2-1 or even reduce it to a 4 game commitment if/when the ACC loses more programs to the BIG, SEC and Big XII? Or do we kick MSU off the schedule permanently?

They're adding another conference game, and I imagine that's going to be the method by which our scheduled games with their teams change.

ND will have some seasons with zero games against Big Ten opponents.

I can foresee them throwing a bone to the Big East and scheduling a game or two against those teams.

Even without MSU, we have 4 or 5 road games booked every year, and instead of getting 2-for-1 deals with Wake Forest, we are stuck in 1-for-1 with the entire ACC. Maybe we need to change Navy to 2-for-"1".

Michigan State would have a lot more to gain by keeping ND as an annual non-conference game than Purdue ever would.

If recent history is any guide, Michigan State will likely be among the better teams in the Big Ten in the years ahead. And there's a far greater chance that Michigan State will beat ND once every few years than Purdue beating ND. Having the opportunity to beat ND once or twice every 5 years would probably make it worth it for MSU to keep ND on its schedule, as having a quality non-conference win will push MSU higher up in the rankings, sell more tickets to games, increase TV exposure and revenues, and potentially position them for a better bowl game.

The only thing that Purdue stands to gain by playing ND is to have a sold-out game at Ross-Ade every other year. Since Weis became ND's coach in 2005, Purdue has beaten ND only once, and that was during ND's worst season in modern history (2007). Because Purdue has been among the weaker teams in the conference, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, Purdue really needs wins from all of their non-conference games if they hope to become bowl eligible. So they have little to gain by having an almost guaranteed loss against ND each year.

Only benefits them. There shouldn't be any big ten team that we should be locked into playing every year.

A convenient cupcake win for any right we may hold, ad infinitum, to disparage the utter nutlessness of BCS/FBS exhibitions. Charging people as if they were going to witness game competition at these charades is dishonest.

There should be no fun, no respect and no advantage in beating up teams from a distinctly lower level of competition. It's like cheering for the man who arm wrestles grade school children for their allowance.

And, ohhhhh would we ever hear about this from the talking heads and fanboy ND haters.
It would be wiser and more honorable to try a little harder and schedule a legitimate competition. We're Notre Dame for God's sake, not the Harlem Globetrotters.

second team. Mid season that'd be way cooler than the other bs...

The guy is an incompetent clown.

It would be funny if it wasnt so pathetic

one down and we'll shoot this one down too.

The chance that ND would have an opening in its schedule due to a late cancellation would be extremely slim, so why bring up the possibility?

During most years, our schedule is pretty much set in stone: 5 ACC teams, USC, Navy, Stanford, MSU, and Purdue. That's ten out of twelve games.

If one of those teams wanted to do a two year hiatus (like MSU in 2014-2015), ND would be aware of it several years in advance, and would have time to schedule a decent opponent.

If an ACC team that was scheduled to play ND decided to move to another conference, ND and the ACC would have at least a few years to fill in that spot with another ACC team.

Unless Miami were to get the "death penalty" from the NCAA, there's no reason why any of those teams would do a last second cancellation.

That leaves only two games on the schedule. I don't see the Texas games being cancelled, and it's unlikely that we will cancel the BYU games either.

Even if a situation arose in which another team bailed on us on short notice, there's no shortage of Big East, Mountain West, and Conference USA teams that would gladly play us.

Ironically, it will be ND that may have to do some last minute cancelling in the next few years. Assuming the 5-game ACC arrangement starts in 2014, ND will have to cancel either the Temple or Northwestern game.

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Obviously, we would never play them there, but I think this is a pretty good indication of how much of a joke it would be to play them in football.

It doesn't even look like a high school stadium, more like some crappy county rec department field.

"That's a nice soccer stadium."

I didn't realize that was also the football stadium.`

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But that is beside the point, ND should never dip down to that level for scheduling a game.

We should never play any of them

the point. Neither of those are valid reasons to break a tradition that makes ND stand out from just about every other Division 1 team

for my dog.

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Kidding. If that ever happened, I would want to drop them from the schedule. I appreciate what they did for us, but surely they would know that if they dropped down a division, they could not assume that we'd stay on their schedule.

Navy dropping down a division is probably the only reason I'd ever want them off our schedule, and I don't see that happening any time soon.

possibility.

every year if they drop to fcs then we should immediately drop them from our schedule

The 88 and 89 schedules included a half dozen shit sandwich games, but people here probably remember them as some of the best ever because of the big games.

EDIT: half dozen is a bit much, but Rice and SMU were basically FCS level games.

the '88 team beat nos. 2, 4,5 and 7, the '89 team beat 7 of the final 18 in the season ending AP polls..did you expect them to play no. 1 every week...those schedules were as tough as ND has ever played..

Schedules are defined by the great teams you play, not the bottom teams. Rice was 0-11 in 1988 and SMU was 2-9 (0-9 against 1A teams) in 1989, but those two steaming turds obviously haven't lessened your overall impression of the 88 and 89 schedules. I realize the difference between 1A teams like Rice and SMU and 1AA teams, and I'm also not saying we need to rush out and get Villanova on schedule. I'm just saying it's not the end of the world if we do. If we play 4 top 10 teams as we did in 88, nobody is going to care or even remember that we played Villanova.

ND is one of only three schools which have never scheduled a 1-AA opponent (USC and UCLA being the other two). I'd like for us eventually to be the last man standing on that list.

And to answer the hypothetical posted above, if Navy drops to 1-AA, it then would be time to drop them from the schedule.

as well as your Nova/Gtown assertion.

The 1989 schedule was ranked No. 1 in the nation. We played only 5 home games and 8 away/neutral, including the Kickoff Classic and Orange Bowl.

The only reason we played Rice in 1988, and the only reason SMU was so wretched in 1989, was SMU's death penalty. Originally, we were supposed to play SMU at Texas Stadium in 1988, and they were a powerful team when those games were scheduled. ND offered to cancel the 1989 SMU game, but SMU (perhaps desirous of a big payday) opted to stick to the contractual commitment.

Other than those games, the only true weakling we played in 1988 and 1989 was Navy. Air Force slumped to 5-7 in 1988 but went to the 1989 Liberty Bowl and was a bowl team most years in that era. Purdue was a Big Ten bottom-dweller but can hardly be compared to any FCS team. The same is true of Stanford in the Pac-10 at that time. Pitt was above .500 both years and beat A&M in the 1989 Sun Bowl.

For you to even insinuate that Heisler's horrid comment today is somehow consistent with our scheduling philosophy in the late 1980s is patently absurd.

the bottom. In 1988, Purdue, Stanford, Rice, and Navy were pretty bad. PSU was obviously a top program of the era, but they had a losing record that year. The 88 schedule was 4 huge games, 1 big name game against a down program, and a bunch of slop. I really don't care all that much about whether the slop consists of D level teams or D-minus teams. According to Sagarin, Villanova was better than Colorado, Army, and a bunch of other D1A schools anyway. BC and Wake were only barely better. If Swarbrick wants to put a tier 1 game in early November and a Tier 1 game over Thanksgiving and Villanova is the best he can do in between, then I'm fine with it.

The point of ND scheduling is that our "bottom" end of the schedule is still teams that you've heard of. You don't need google to find Tulsa or Purdue. You need google to find out about Presbyterian, Applachia St, and Eastern Washington etc.

Our teams can still get good players and win. We aren't buying a win when we schedule Tulsa or Duke.

It's just a coicindence that we've never played a non-division one school. Pure historical accident. If we were to schedule such a team, it wouldn't represent a change in policy at all.

I wish our crackerjack beat writer contingent would ask a real humdinger of a question:

Which SEC and Big 12 teams have we asked for a November home and home, and received the bird?

Their conundrum, such as it is, is finding a team that will play a one and done with us.

Compared to old ND spokesmen like Charlie Callahan, Roger Valdiserri, and even Moose although technically the AD, he spoke a lot, JH seems to have the personality of a door knob..