Lol...three games, not two. It doesn't have to make sense to non-ND people, does it?
Less conference and TV money is not that big of an issue with ND. It now fully funds 26 sports and returns $20-25 million a year to the academic side as is.
What is it going to do with the extra money? Hire more consultants or put a fountain in the locker room?
In the latest Forbes evaluation, ND is 7th in total revenues and only four schools made a bigger profit than ND now, and that was with football lottery ticket donations not being counted for ND.
"The one outlier in the conference talk is, of course, the football independent Notre Dame, which ranks seventh with team revenues of $112 million. Although the Irish don't get conference money for football, the team still receives a reported $15 million per year from NBC for broadcast rights to its home games. What's more, Notre Dame's athletic department doesn't even report the vast majority of contributions tied to the football team's ticket lottery, since most of those are made directly to the university. "
College football's 25 most valuable teams generate a combined $2.5 billion per year, and now the Texas A&M Aggies have surpassed the Texas Longhorns as the sport's most valuable team.
www.forbes.com
ND thinks that independence is better for the brand and for scheduling and for the school marketing in general.
It thinks that being in a football conference and playing 8 or 9 conference games is too regional and restrictive.
