Like Catholic, football-obsessed Boston College, Notre Dame of all places is beginning to show signs of spiritual strain. More and more fans confess that the school’s squalid football program – which slimes along its merry way accompanied by a tireless chorus of We’re godly from the school – is so squalid, so hypocritical, that they just can’t do it anymore. Notre Dame is a choir boy gone rancid, and while most of the congregants have decided through an effort of will to grip their hymnals ever tighter and ignore the stinky lad, some have become overwhelmed by the smell. They may still buy tickets to the games, but they’re “finding it hard to care very much.” They’re finding it hard to forget six player arrests in one night, and blahblahblah you know the picture. You know it from forthrightly filthy programs like University of Miami, and you know it from equally but not at all forthrightly filthy Notre Dame.
Notre Dame is Blanche DuBois flouncing around a dump, twirping about her moral purity and her clean bright Southern manse. You just want to look away.
August 30th, 2016 at 1:45PM
Well UD, just to let you know, Notre Dame is finishing up renovating their football stadium at the cost of at least $400 million.
crossroads.nd.edu/faqs/
That’s nearly twice as much as that other religious uni, Baylor, spent on building their new football palace. Of course, if you read the link, construction costs are to be paid by new seating, luxury boxes, and, oh yeah, bonds.
Someone should do a study to see the correlation between the way unis handle player criminality and the amount of money spent on athletic buildouts. Stands to reason that if uni admins are putting this much debt on their balance sheets that more than a few things are going to be overlooked….
August 30th, 2016 at 2:07PM
charlie: Yes. A lot of these schools simply can’t afford to let certain players go. Which is why Mississippi State’s defensive lineman just got his fourth of what will certainly be many more arrests.
August 30th, 2016 at 2:31PM
That’s amazing, even by SEC standards.
What’s even more amazing is that the economic sustainability of many unis isn’t predicated on the BOT’s or admin competence, Faculty Senate input nor alumni support. No, it’s based on the capacity of a few important athletes to stay healthy or stay outta jail. If your outstanding QB blows out a knee or blows past a police checkpoint, the prospects for some uni’s finances get real sketchy. What a hell of situation….
August 30th, 2016 at 4:11PM
We have a lot of ND fans around here, UD, and they are as fanatically committed as ever. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a long line of penitents at the confessional.
Whoever would have believed even a decade ago that we would reach a point where Northwestern, which in living memory has had a only a dozen decent seasons and been ranked in the top 10 once in the last 60 years, is dropping $260 million on a football stadium?
August 30th, 2016 at 4:41PM
tp: Yeah, I don’t think football repentance is going to catch on in a very big way at ND.
As for NU, where I was an undergrad and where (I wrote about this on the blog at some point) I distinctly remember going to a football game with a bunch of ironist/nihilists who knew we’d lose by about sixty points – and we did lose by about sixty points – and who turned the whole thing into a hilarious weed-fueled delight — look what’s happened since then. Pity.
August 30th, 2016 at 4:49PM
charlie,
for the vast majority of schools, athletics is not contributing to economic sustainability. which makes the whole thing sadder.
August 30th, 2016 at 5:59PM
Yeah John, I don’t think more than a dozen unis out of, what, 119 schools that make up D1 teams, have profitable athletic programs. Ain’t life grand?
August 30th, 2016 at 9:09PM
Notre Dame loves it some visibility with Texas high school athletes. Note that ND plays my alma mater, Army, in San Antonio November 12. Lots of connection with the military and with the Catholic Church, but still . . . .
Yeah, I’m gonna go to the game. It takes a brave man to be an Army fan. I was there in the fall of 1973 when ND beat us 63-3 at West Point.