BREAKING: Notre Dame Football RAGE QUITS after Playoff "snub"

I wanted to see the Mormons beat the Catholics.

Money has ruined college football. There are at least five teams who have now opted out. The bowls need to field teams and they will get them somewhere, including taking teams that finished with losing records if necessary. Some of these teams have opted out because their players simply do not want to play, they are too afraid of getting hurt by playing one extra game before the Draft.

I remember watching the East-West Shrine Game, the Senior Bowl, and the Hula Bowl when I was young. It seemed like every top player in the country was in one or even two of them. This was after already having played in their respective bowl games. It was awesome seeing the Heisman winner from one team throwing a pass to the All-American receiver from a rival team. I can't remember which game it was but in one of them, the players would collect helmet decals from their teammates and cover their helmets with them. Crazy seeing a usually blank Penn State helmet with a Miami "U", a "Pitt" logo, an Ohio State "O", and a Tennessee "T" all over it. The Senior Bowl was the ONLY game where collegiates could make a little money (and I emphasize little money). I think they each made maybe $1,000 tops and the offensive and defensive MVPs got a bonus of maybe $5,000.

They played for the love of the game. Not anymore.

The Big XII is not happy. They are fining Iowa State and Kansas State $500,000 each. Meanwhile, Baylor (also in the Big XII) was not fined despite declining a bowl because they were only a replacement team at 5-7 and were not technically "bowl eligible."

espn.com

Iowa St., K-State skip bowls, owe Big 12 $500K

Iowa State and Kansas State have each been fined $500,000 by the Big 12 for choosing to turn down bowl invitations. Both programs made their decisions after coaching changes last week.

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Iowa State, Kansas State, and Baylor are all bowl eligible and opting out of bowls this year, Florida State becomes bowl eligible because there aren't enough six or more win teams to fill all the slots and they're opting out. But sure, get mad at Notre Dame. I hope Alabama goes 8-4 next year so we can see what kinds of knots the Committee ties itself into to get them in the 2026 playoffs.

Yet again i find myself going boomer here. When I was 21 y/o, if i was playing D-1 football with my boys and we could go on a roadie to a hotel with palm trees all expenses paid and play football...who would say no to that. I do reluctanty get the true draft prospects maybe sitting out but going. But that's the minority. Its 10 degrees here!!!!

There was a time bowl bids were fairly rare and special. You only got them if you had a pretty special season and sometimes even that wasn't enough. Pitt was 9-1 in 1963 losing only to Navy who was #2 in the country at the end of the regular season and didn't go to a bowl. You could count the number of bowl games on your fingers. The names of the bowls meant something and they were in sort of exotic locations, places that were tourist destinations.

Now you get to a bowl with a mediocre season, possibly in a place most people don't go to in December or January. More teams get bids than don't. If you're Penn State and had a season that was well into the crapper but rallied to be eligible I can see why you want to go. If you're Wisconsin next year and manage to be eligible once again after two years of ineligibility I can see where minimal eligibility is an accomplishment. But if you had a goal if being in the playoffs and a season that made a very strong case for being there I can see where a meaningless bowl game is a giant anti climax and you'd decide it's not worth going.

Personally, I don't care for the BCS in College football. I know everyone wants a champion for the whole season across all of college, but I think the rivalries of the prior system allowed for the claims of being "the best" to apply to several teams potentially. And that creates debate and smack talk and the like, which I found much more interesting.

Take Indiana, for example. They just beat Ohio. This gives them great credibility to being #1. However, with BCS still to come, and another three games potentially, it's possible for another team with an 11-2 record that hasn't had the quality of Indiana's season, to steal a win and, in essence, tarnish Indian's season.

Anyway, BCS is what it is. Notre Dame doesn't need the money that a Bowl Game will bring. So, If they want to make a statement about the system being heavily favored to SEC, and the BIG 10 (with 18 teams) schools etc., good for them. The current system needs an overhaul of some kind anyway.

Most teams lose money by going to a bowl game, especially if that game isnt a playoff bowl. I think what ND is doing is the future of the sport, not a one off.

Playing an exhibition football game tied to a big party for your fans just isnt the most important thing.

So get used to it, THIS is the future of college fball.

With multiple players entering the portal right now, rosters are further thinned. You wind up with 3rd-stringers being the most willing and available players, who wants to see that? The vast majority of bowls have been watered-down, DGAF affairs for years and years. I wouldn't be sad to see the Sun Bowl, Liberty Bowl, LA Bowl, XBOX Bowl, Military Bowl, Armed Forces Bowl, Pinstripe Bowl, Fenway Bowl, Boca Raton Bowl, Citrus Bowl, Pop-Tarts Bowl, and the rest of them all go away forever. Sure, keep maybe a few around to showcase novel matchups (hard to find with constant conference realignments) of the remaining top 25 not in the playoffs. Once these bowls started pulling 5-win teams, it was officially irrelevant. As if traveling to see .500 teams play a meaningless exhibition wasn't already pathetic. For a lot of these programs, certainly G5 and even some P4, going to bowl games actually costs them money.

The real reason why ND got shafted isn't because you can make a good argument that Miami should be in ahead of them (I personally think ND has been clearly the better team, but I'm biased). No, it's because of the way the committee got there: before last weekend, ND was two spots ahead of Miami. Neither team played a snap, but somehow we end up with Miami ahead (and BYU behind both). If conference championships matter, how did ND and Miami not jump Alabama, who got crushed by Georgia? If they don't, why did BYU drop below Miami and effectively kick ND out?

As for the Euro soccer style overhaul, I'm mostly a fan, but it would be great to save at least 1-2 games for rivalries. The schedule could be 10 games against other teams in one's division, two rivalry games against historic rivals (ND's would be USC and Navy, for example), and then an 8- or 12-team playoff. I'd be a huge fan of that.

Who is going to bat for ND when the discussion is being had.

SEC, Big 10 etc, etc. Every other team has a large bureaucracy and associated TV money behind them. ND acts all special and is being treated accordingly.

The world is changing. Complain about it or respond to the new reality.

I feel like at one time I was kind of on board with the ND pirate ship--independent and all that. But at this point having had realignment numerous times, big 10 invited them numerous times and skipping bowls, lets just leave them out of the whole conversation if that's how they want to be. Other squads are bankable too, that's not just an ND thing, ever since that NBC deal 20-30 odd yrs ago they think they play by different rules. You dont think OSU or UM or bama couldn't make their own deal? ND is just a pain and doesn't want to be part of NCAA football. Get rid of them. Keep playing navy and little house of the poor and see if you get into playoff.

No way this would ever fly. The vast majority of ADs, whether CFP/FBS or FCS or D2 or D3, want some guarantees of stability. Even if that means their prospects for huge success are also limited. For so many of them, remaining within a conference system holds an assurance of TV deal income share. This is exactly why there has been so much desperate conference jumping of late.

ND used to play a useful role in that they would play people in all the different conference when those conferences largely avoided one another. That time has passed

But it is hard to get upset about a team skipping some meaningless bowl game. Have those games give the players 30k NIL deals and there might be a bit more enthusiasm

Lets not forget ND plays 24 sports..........in the ACC! Except football!!! They wanted to be exceptional, and not play a championship game and get special treatment. Now they got it. Sitting at home. Lets also not forget how many years folks had an issue with ND being ranked as high as they were. That was a meme.

They need to get right. Play a much harder schedule or get in a conference where you can have an excuse for an easier schedule, but go to a conference 'chip to pad the resume.

100% their fault

Obviously there are varied opinions on ND's choice to sit out the bowl season, but is anyone going to say that they would bet money on Tulane or James Madison in a game against ND?

The playoff selection process is a joke.

The fans got neither the 12 best teams, nor the 12 most deserving teams.

This.

The playoffs are a made up competition between several large conferences and ESPN. It doesn't exist to find the best team of the season - although it might do so in most years- but to make money for the conferences and ESPN. Because of their historic status in college football and, more importantly, their huge national fan base, ND is allowed to be considered despite not being a member of the cartel. So when the Committee manipulates the ranking for five weeks to energize fan bases and create interest in the decisions, only to default in protecting cartel members at the end, ND is correct in pointing out the dishonesty, but needs to remember that they aren't a member of the cartel and don't get to make the rules.

In evaluating the faux outrage by the talking heads at ESPN, consider that the only reason they give a damn is that whatever matchup they have for the bowl ND declined with garner nowhere near the advertising dollars that they would have been able to command with ND in the game. It isn't about purity of sport, the sanctity of competition, but rather dollars for ESPN.

And by the way, the decision to not play wasn't prompted by the ND administration, AD or coach. The senior players advised the coach and AD that enough key players wouldn't play a meaningless bowl instead of preparing for the draft, that the resulting team would not have been representative.

ND helped the ACC stay relevant when they were about to be cut out of the cartel (because FSU and Clemson wanted to walk). The ACC stabbed them, and ND won't forget it.

X

“Why would the conference we refuse to join despite our sweetheart deal politic for their actual full fledged member over us?”