Then you have a good reason to root for them. A lot don't - they bandwagon.
Pick a conference....play decent teams. Don't skip post season because your "feweings" got hurt. Also doesn't help I think M. Freeman is an arrogant ***.
So what if they wanna skip an overall meaningless bowl game? Why does that bother you?
Anyway, lots of ND fans aren't happy with the ACC agreement and how it hurts their SOS. That was not really the case back when the agreement started and more ACC teams were competitive (Clemson in its heyday, Virginia Tech being better, little brother being good, etc.)
There's a lot historically to ND continuing to be independent (see below, much of it shamelessly ripped from a post on another board).
Conferences started to form in the 1890s, with the Western Conference (now the Big Ten) connecting a number of large Midwest research-oriented institutions who looked to build academic ties and bring order to a chaotic sport.
Notre Dame was a small private Catholic school and so not a natural fit. As their football team rapidly improved, they became competitive with Michigan, beating them for the first time in 1909. Michigan coach Fielding Yost responded by canceling the series on a pretext. He subsequently led a Western Conference boycott of Notre Dame and refused them conference entry, in part because of anti-Catholic bias which was prevalent in America at that time.
Knute Rockne took over coaching ND in 1918 and recognized that college football was all about publicity and showmanship. Since many (but not all) Western Conference teams would not schedule Notre Dame, he took Notre Dame on the road. He played powerhouse Army teams on the east coast, USC on the west coast, and balanced that with local schools like Iowa, plus Purdue and Indiana, two Western Conference schools which broke the boycott.
Notre Dame gained enough national reputation in those years to become the default rooting interest for millions of Catholic Irish immigrants. ND had enough money coming in to support the team and a unique position as a national player in the sport. The local conference hated us. So independence worked well for ND for many years. The money saved the place, along with a financial boost from Navy to survive WWII.
Fast forward to the 1980s. The NCAA controlled TV rights and restricted national TV appearances to two or three a year in an attempt to balance the playing field. Several conferences and independent teams, including Notre Dame but not the Big Ten and Pac-8, set up the CFA to negotiate TV rights separately and won the subsequent court battle against the NCAA on restraint of trade grounds. Notre Dame promptly set up its own TV deal with NBC Sports, a huge financial and recruiting advantage at the time.
This was the match that eventually set the fire of conference realignment we see today. As TV rights consolidated in the age of cable and ESPN, conferences became an efficient way to grab TV dollars. ND’s independence is a net financial drain these days.
But it is a cost ND willingly pays. A hundred years of being told to piss off by conferences and you eventually embrace independence. It is how Notre Dame came to be what it is in football, which in turn has funded its academic status where the little Catholic midwestern school is now a top university, with a top 10 or so endowment.
Ironically, the Big Ten would now love nothing more than to bring Notre Dame in. They offered in the 90s and the administration at the time actually considered it. The alumni and large donors openly revolted.
The last AD, being a man who knew which side of his bread was buttered, articulated ND's current conference stance well. As long as ND can stay in the financial neighborhood of the conference teams, and as long as we have access to playoff scheduling, ND will remain independent.
Lastly...
"I've said this before: I don't ever want to take attention away from the team," Freeman, whose father is Black and mother is South Korean, said after the Orange Bowl win.
"It is an honor, and I hope all coaches -- minorities, Black, Asian, White, it doesn't matter, great people -- continue to get opportunities to lead young men like this."
Yeah, Freeman sounds really arrogant.
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