When the news first broke about Notre Dame playing Western Michigan, I wasn't too upset. It wasn't officially announced by Notre Dame, yet, so we hadn't had a chance to hear from Jack Swarbrick on the matter. I figured there were many mitigating circumstances around the situation.
But then Jack Swarbrick did discuss the issue, and now I'm not happy.
We had a number of teams working very hard to try to move other games, to get their conference to make concessions in the conference schedule, do whatever. The one that was able to get it all done and get it done with the least complications was Western Michigan.
On its face, that's a fairly benign statement. But even a moment's thought causes a great deal of frustration. The quotation means that Western Michigan was "first" to have all their ducks in a row, and Swarbrick just jumped at the chance to fill the hole in the schedule. The quotation also means that Swarbrick didn't understand what his "nuclear option" was. Western Michigan was his Nuclear Option. Western Michigan was what should have happened had all else failed. We don't know what other teams among the "number" were "working very hard" to get on ND's schedule, but when WMU raised their hand and said, "Ooh! Ooh! Oooh," Swarbrick should have been saying, "Hey. That's great. We'll take it into consideration," and then just kept on waiting for the other teams among that number. By Swarbrick's own claim, he had options. He just didn't have the patience, the cool, or the willingness to play to his power position to take advantage of them.
There is hope. There's a real hope, to which I'll cling to until the end of the year. At that point, the future schedules for 2011 and 2012 should be finalized. Perhaps this disaster is just a one-time thing, and Jack will resuscitate our faith in him with strong, historically relevant opponents on those schedules. But if Charlie Weis is in desperate search of a "Signature Win," Jack Swarbrick is now in desperate need of a "Signature Opponent" or two. Or three. The 2010 schedule now features Utah, Tulsa, and Western Michigan all within a 30 day stretch of the calendar. While we fully acknowledge that Utah has had a fine recent history, and Tulsa can even look competent on the field of play, Jack Swarbrick is trying to pull a fast one when he says...
"It reflects a not very sophisticated view of what's going on out there," Swarbrick said of any backlash. "Utah is going to be in a BCS bowl this year, in all likelihood. Utah had a number of years where it was in national championship contention and is having another very good year. Two years ago Tulsa had a great year and in a lot of ways is one of the more dangerous teams in country.
Swarbrick either doesn't want to admit or doesn't fully understand that in "today's landscape," it's a near craps shoot as to which teams will be good 1 or 2 years from now, so rather than throw darts at a list of the 120 D1 programs in the land to find an opponent who might be decent relative to decades of historical futility, it's a far finer plan to identify the traditionally solid programs and get them on the schedule. We're not asking for "top 10" competition in place of WMU, but perhaps a program that's made it into the top-25 several times in the last decade would be a good qualification.
There is one other hope to which we're clinging: That Jack Swarbrick knows all this and just doesn't feel like now is the time to admit that the WMU game reflects an abject failure on his part. Yes, he was put in a difficult position due to the previous AD and some miscommunication with other programs, and yes it was a difficult challenge, but it's a challenge he's failed no matter the spin. We can only hope that in private, off the record, he's frustrated by this failure, but in public he's bound by social constraints from proclaiming that the program that just filled a hole on his schedule that desperately needed filling was the absolute worst result he could have achieved short of not filling that hole at all.
By Mark October 23, 2009 - 8:55 am
When I used to play NCAA football on the playstation 2 in college, I would always make my own schedule for ND. The computer would always generate patsy’s for me to play. 1-AA Southeast, San Jose State, Western Michigan. I would go in and change those dates to play Oklahoma, Florida, and Arizona State (I always wanted one break in the schedule.) I feel like Swarbrick is the damn computer lining up all these sacraficial lamb pay days. Is it going to take the inevitable break in the sell out streak to end this madness?
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By domer.mq October 23, 2009 - 9:06 am
That’s a very apt analogy, Mark. Swarbrick’s got, essentially, one last chance to redeem himself here. If he doesn’t do it, I really am considering just “growing up” and worrying about “important things” rather than ND football.
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By david October 23, 2009 - 9:32 am
Domer,
Not trying to be a smartypants, but what has Swarbrick done to bring the idea that he has “one last chance to redeem himself”? I am not sure I understand that. Now if he started scheduling MAC teams regularly, then we have a problem. Whose to say that if Tulsa is the other game that we couldn’t get other teams to switch their schedules so that we could get another big time program? Had we had a more competant AD who truley valued football in White, we wouldn’t have been here. My advice, relax. It is one game. If it becomes a trend, then we do have a problem.
Now, this isn’t related to you per se domer, but ND fans are a funny bunch of squirrels. I have to believe that when 2012-13 (or whenever it is) we have OK on the schedule, we’ll have complainers saying the schedule is too hard (UM,OK,USC). Again, an honest question, who would you prefer to have on the schedule, or what would you like to see the schedule look like?
GO IRISH, BEAT BC (Please!!!)!!!
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By Craig October 23, 2009 - 9:48 am
I don’t think WMU was the first, rather, they were the ones that Swarbrick was able to work something out with where it didn’t cost too much in terms of either money or other concessions.
Not sitting in his chair, I don’t know what sort of constraints he set on what he was willing to do to get a deal done. Nor do I know how much he could have improved the deal with a willingness to take on a higher payout and/or scheduling concessions, nor what the opportunity cost of such concessions might be.
I’m a lot more concerned that Swarbrick was able to go a whole year thinking Tulsa was on the schedule when they weren’t than I am that he got stuck with a bunch of unpalatable options when he was very late trying to finish off the schedule.
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By domer.mq October 23, 2009 - 9:52 am
All I’d ask is that the team that filled that slot make have made either several appearances in the AP T25 in the last decade or a few in the last few years. Total AP T25 appearances for Western Michigan in its history: 0.
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By undnut October 23, 2009 - 9:58 am
At least its not Appalachian State…whew.
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By Mark October 23, 2009 - 10:04 am
There is a way to make the Irish schedule appear to be harder but actually be a little bit easier. I agree that Tulsa and Utah are tough games. The real problem is there is absolutely no merit in beating them.
I think Washington is a good opponent, and up and coming program with a good coach in the BCS.
Let’s stick to that model. How about teams like Arizona State (they were looking for an opponent next year)? I like the Pittsburgh matchup. How about North Carolina, or Clemson, Virginia, Auburn, Baylor, Colorado, Arizona, Cal, Maryland, Oregon State? All of these teams come from BCS territory.
We don’t need the toughest teams in the country (i.e. Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Ohio State) week in and week out. However, we cannot stick to this 7-4-1 crap. Honestly, it’s bullshit. The only people who will accept this non home-and-home madness are throw away teams like Western Michigan.
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By domer.mq October 23, 2009 - 10:14 am
Exactly, Mark. And I get that there were constraints as to who could free up for the open slot in our schedule, but geez. How the hell did a year go by with such a mistake? Swarbrick would do well to fire someone. Cough*Heisler*Cough
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By The Biscuit October 23, 2009 - 10:53 am
My guess is that your last paragraph is right. That he knows this isn’t the result he wanted, but what’s he going to say? “I am embarrassed we have WMU on the schedule and I will do better inthe future”? Hell no. And I think you’re giving his public statements a lot of credit when he said there were ‘a lot’ of options on the table and WMU was the first to make it happen. I bet there was more than one, but at this point in the year I am pretty sure that the others were just as ‘bad’ of an option. So I’d take a lot of that with a HUGE grain of salt. Swarbrick can’t tell everyone what really went down – that they inherited a crappy situation, and he didn’t handle it great, and so we’re stuck. But he can ensure it doesn’t happen again, which I’m hoping he does.
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By Craig October 23, 2009 - 11:57 am
I find the rumor that I just saw recently (and MQ, I would think you’ve seen it too) that Heisler is untouchable for some reason to be very interesting. If he can’t be fired, can we somehow convince el Profesor Blanco that he should be hired on at Duke?
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By DeepTeaKup October 23, 2009 - 12:01 pm
Unless ND is ever willing to play 5 or more on the road, this is going to happen. Sorry, you are just not going to get many mid range BCS teams to agree to an unbalanced series (2-1, 3-2, etc). If you want a “step up” it would probably be against teams like Boise State, TCU, Fresno, or WVU who have a history of forgoing home games to get more marquee opponents.
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By domer.mq October 23, 2009 - 12:06 pm
Craig, yeah. Heard it. Wondering about the why behind it.
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By domer.mq October 23, 2009 - 12:07 pm
DTK, the joke of it is, I’m quite confident that if you took a poll of ND alums, at least, you’d find most of them don’t want/care about 7 home games. Give us 6, and then give the National Alumni Base an interesting away game every year. I’d love to go anywhere in the DC vicinity, give or take a few hours drive, to see a quality game with a quality opponent. It’s all about the money. They’d play 12 home games if they could.
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By The Biscuit October 23, 2009 - 12:38 pm
DMQ, put up a poll brother. I dont think anyone wants 7 games, except White/maybe Swarbrick/the admin. 7 home games, and the neutral site every year, are just bad ideas.
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By The Biscuit October 23, 2009 - 12:39 pm
6-6 would be fine to most i’m sure. if we went with a neutral site every other year, we could do 6-5-1. better skeds, and keeping up demand for the Home games.
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By Craig October 23, 2009 - 12:54 pm
DTK, the problem isn’t just that we insist on playing eight home or de facto home games, it’s that we’re not being selective enough with the valuable road slots. USC, Michigan, Michigan State, and BC are fine. Purdue and Navy have historical reasons to be there. But then, the 8th and final slot needs to be a serious opponent, and instead it’s Stanford. (Or, worse, in future years, UConn.)
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By Irish_Wertzy October 23, 2009 - 1:12 pm
Actually, if you look at most of the top programs (and by top, I mean traditional top programs, big name programs, etc) they often have 7 home games as well.
Home games from 2006-2009:
ND-7,6,7,7
Florida-7,7,7,7
OSU-7,7,7,7
Texas-7,6,7,6
Michigan-7,8,7,8
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By Mark October 23, 2009 - 1:34 pm
DTK is right. The problem Wertzy is that those teams have conference restrictions. So Florida can say: “We play in the SEC, it doesn’t matter what the out of conference schedule is because the SEC is a top 25 team every week.”
ND needs 6 and 6 because of these “rivals” that appear on the schedule every year. We need to drop the 7-4-1.
If they want to keep it, then we need to change the home and home teams. SC and Navy always. We can play either Michigan or Michigan State. We don’t have to play both. We need another West coast game for when SC is on the road. So if you want to make it Stanford or Washington that’s fine with me. Same with Navy on the East coast, so say Pittsburgh, Penn State, or BC.
So the 4 home games with return dates are SC, Michigan/Michigan State, Navy and a big name team.
The 4 road dates with home series are Washington/Stanford, BC/Penn State/Pittsburgh, Purdue and big name team.
Then you get three home date sacraficial lambs and one neutral site “our program will play you anywhere because no one will watch us at home” game.
So fill those home and home dates with two ranked teams who are good on a consistent basis.
Or just go back to 6 and 6 and play the schedule we used to play.
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By The Biscuit October 23, 2009 - 1:39 pm
I honestly wouldnt want the pendulum to swing back too far the other way either, where every year we play a top 10 SOS. we did that for years, and it crushed any hopes of a MNC or BCS. we need a SOS in the mid-30′s – difficult, but not impossible, on average. of course that’s hard to manage, but lots of folks are calling for skeds that are too far the other way. i dont want WMU, but i dont need a Top 10 team replacing them either. just something else that’s not so….sad.
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By domer.mq October 23, 2009 - 2:02 pm
Yeah, but Wertzy, most of those teams have Charleston Southern or North Texas or the equivalent on the schedule.
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By Craig October 23, 2009 - 2:04 pm
Mark, we certainly don’t need to do 6-6 to have an acceptable schedule. 7-5 would only involve two non-return games each season. I think we can get away with alternating 8-4 (or de facto 8-4) with 7-5, that would give us 9 home-and-home slots each year, so basically three buy games every year to fill out the back end of the schedule. Provided that we use the home-and-homes selectively, that would give a very acceptable schedule distribution every year.
And with the possibility of getting a team like TCU or Utah as one of the non-returns, it becomes even less necessary to keep those games to three in a season; Utah and especially TCU slot very nicely into the middle part of the schedule rather than the filler.
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By Mark G October 23, 2009 - 4:25 pm
There were tickets available for the Washington game from the ticket office up to a day or two before that game. No body outside the stadium could unload tickets at face before that game.
There were tickets for the BC game tomorrow available from the ticket office as recently as this morning. I know of lots of people with extras they will not be able to sell.
Connecticut it still not a sell out. I will have so many extras that I and everyone with me will be able to leave the stadium at half time, go to the car to get a refreshment, and then used the extras to get back into the stadium for the second half.
What is beneficial about having 7 home games if we cannot sell out and cannot get opponents that anyone is excited enough about to show up?
Hey Jack: Good luck selling out that Western Michigan game in mid-October.
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By Trey October 24, 2009 - 10:23 pm
I just read this post today abd, holy **** are you SERIOUS??? This crap team us the same garbage we give dtk and his skunks hell for sheduling each year. At least THAT matchup makes a little sense being both in the same state. Wtf is ND doing scheduling this crap??? Why the hell can we not get a decent AD anywhere?
Teams i want to see on the ND sched: tx tech, tcu, ore st, maryland, wvu, uva, usf, baylor, boise st. None of those are absolute powerhouses, so the honor of playing nd would still exist to a degree, they could easily bump or move some lesser ooc gms themselves to make room, and theyre interesting matchups.
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By Matt '09 October 25, 2009 - 12:01 am
We should just join the SEC. Then no one could bitch, right?
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By Craig October 25, 2009 - 4:16 pm
Trey, I think the bumping or moving lesser OOC games is much trickier to pull off than you are implying. Consider, for one example, the BYU move in ’04 that cost us home games for SDSU and Nevada.
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By FightingSonOfNotreDame October 26, 2009 - 8:55 am
Guys,
The reality is that most of the “traditional powerhouse” top 10 teams schedule these kind of games annually throughout their schedule and it helps their chances of winning an NC significantly.
Is it right? No, but that’s the way the perception is with the poll voters and BCS. It prevents their players from getting as banged up week after week and it gives the team a chance to execute the full playbook in a real game.
Whereas we rarely have a couple true creampuffs – this upcoming game notwithstanding
.
Why do we as fans impose stricter rules on our team than the BCS imposes on the top 10? It’s foolish.
The risk/reward of us getting a the benefits of a creampuff game far outweigh the negative perception of that game, that’s just the way it is.
Unless Senator Hatch and President Obama federally mandate a shakeup and top down college football system (and let’s hope that doesn’t happen) then this reality will be there for a long time to come.
We have to be realistic and thankfully Swarbrick totally understands this. He wants us to have the optimal schedule for getting a National Championship.
We need to stop handicapping our players with stricter rules than their peers!!!
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