Continuing the Obsession: Irish Give the Entire Mitten State the Middle Finger!

Yes, it is Notre Dame Obsession Day and more mocking of the Fighting Irish's schedule.

Actually, it's more of just wondering the true motivation behind the Irish wanting to duck traditional rivals Michigan and Michigan State in its defacto Big Ten conference schedule. According to the Detroit Free Press, the Notre Dame-Michigan series contract expires in 2011 and the Irish wish to take the game off---and a few years later, the same thing will happen for Michigan State. They plan to replace the Wolverines with Oklahoma and the Spartans with Arizona State.

Looking at Notre Dame historically, the Michigan game has been huge. UM introduced the game to Notre Dame, and quickly throttled them before both developed into the traditional powerhouses that they are today. But one of the main items that this boils down to is money.

Yes, just like signing sneaker deals or having the Notre Dame Broadcasting Company--both schools are trying to squeeze more bucks out of the money presses known as their football programs. The Irish are trying to set their schedule so that they play either Michigan or USC (their two largest draws) every year at home instead of getting them both at home or on the road the same year. The Wolverines have the same problem, except that the home Notre Dame game usually falls on the same year Ohio State comes to Ann Arbor. USC could fix half of this problem, but the Pac 10 schedule has been set for almost 10 years in advance, so that threw the monkey wrench in the deal.

So it appears that the easiest way to fix this is to not play at all--almost the 'cutting off the nose to spite the face' theory, except these two programs are the equivalent of Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston--they would cut off their noses to spite their face and instantly get rhinoplasty for a better nose--in this case, it's Oklahoma and Arizona State for the Irish, and rumored to be Georgia for the Blue. Michigan State gets the consolation prize of not getting smacked around by the Irish, but in reality, the Sparties get the short end of the stick.

One does have to wonder--why did Notre Dame chose to drop Michigan and Michigan State instead of some of their other traditional rivals--like Purdue, Navy, Army, Air Force, Pitt, Stanford, Northwestern or Boston College? The pure cynic would say that it's to drop a squad that have either beaten the Irish regularly (see the Wolverines) or a squad that scares the Irish consistently (see Michigan State of late with a few wins and last year's close call). With their presence in the heart of the Big Ten geography and their schedules with other Big Ten schools, exposure won't be a problem.

But exposure to the Irish is a big deal these days with plans to return to prominence by barnstorming and taking even more of a national schedule than they traditionally have. The Irish will be playing in San Antonio and Orlando (see below) and with the addition of Arizona State and Oklahoma--they will be putting even more product in front of the Sun Belt's growing masses (read also, growing and already strong high school talent') instead of the 10,000,000 souls that are sentenced to a Michigan winter annually.

It's a great idea--taken from the adage of 'history repeats itself', since Rockne did it by scheduling Army, Texas, Penn State, USC, Nebraska in his day--and also to the fact that 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery' since Michigan AD Bill Martin is considering the same thing on scheduling 'away' home games like the Irish.......