Notre Dame Is Still Leading the Charge

To set the record straight, Notre Dame played only 13 football games last season, not even as many as the Raiders.

Of the 13, 12 were carried on national television. The only one that missed was the Stanford game, and that, you concluded, was Stanford’s fault for having changed its nickname from Indians to Cardinal, watering down interest.

Have you ever seen kids playing cowboy and cardinal?

“Go back to Indians,” the networks exhort Stanford, “and we can sell you.”

Rising like the Matterhorn in amateur football, Notre Dame helped pioneer the forward pass. It gave the world the Gipper, making a halfback of Ronald Reagan, who was a guard.

The Four Horsemen rode at Notre Dame, no two of whom weighed as much combined as Bubba Paris. The heaviest of the four, in fact, reported in at 162.

Billed as the Fighting Irish, Notre Dame has produced All-Americans named Lujack, Bertelli, Mastrangelo, Guglielmi, Varrichione, Pietrosante, Buoniconti and Patulski.

Little wonder a force so inventive would lead the charge into TV, becoming the first school, back in 1951, to sign a network deal all its own. It hooked up with something called Dumont for five games, worth a slick $55,000 to the Irish, who would then open the gates to closed circuit.

When Notre Dame played USC in ‘51, folks seated in an auditorium in Chicago watched the match for a fee.

Now Notre Dame enters into a new television venture, this time with NBC, which has contracted to carry all Notre Dame home games for five years, beginning in 1991.

The schedules already are arranged. Actually, they are arranged at Notre Dame until the year 2000, and, checking with management the other day, we found it busily engaged, working on schedules between 2000 and 2004, by which time a worried nation will be asking, “Is Lou Holtz still getting laughs in Mishawaka?”

“There would seem to be gross overreaction to our television deal,” says Roger Valdiserri, associate athletic director of Notre Dame, who has served the institution for 24 years. “It will involve only six games a year. The visiting teams will get half the money. Our half will not be devoted to football, but totally to student aid.”

NBC’s payoffs, in other words, will go to students who aren’t getting checks from Dad.

“We are trying to gather $100 million for student aid,” Valdiserri says. “Football will provide just a fraction of that sum.”

Several questions have been raised in connection with Notre Dame’s going into business for itself in television. First, brothers in the College Football Assn. charge that Notre Dame, by its unilateral move, has weakened the group.

Second, it is claimed that Notre Dame is taking unfair recruiting advantage. It is long established that exposure on national TV sells recruits in football and basketball. With its new arrangement, Notre Dame has guaranteed itself exposure it would not get if its teams fall into a slump, leading normally to an avoidance by TV.

The late Art Rooney used to say of television, “You run cold and it will drop you for Chinese checkers.”

This brings up a third point, that related to NBC’s gambling against Notre Dame’s falling on its helmet.

If, say, Notre Dame goes 5-6 in 1992, what will be the ratings in ’93 for home games with Northwestern, Pitt, Navy and Boston College?

In such circumstances, NBC opens the window and goes out. Its credo must be, “A strong Notre Dame is a strong America.”

Over the years in football, Notre Dame hasn’t been your pillar of conventionality. Removing itself for 45 years from postseason games, it returned to this form of commerce in 1970, resolved to accept invitations only to the so-called major bowls.

It didn’t want to compromise its dignity playing off-Broadway, and, except for one detour to the Liberty Bowl and one to the Aloha, it has stuck to its philosophy.

Then, when corporate sponsorship moved into the bowl picture, entrants agreed, for TV purposes, to wear patches bearing the name of the game and its sponsor.

West Virginia did this a year ago at the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl, but not Notre Dame.

At the recent Federal Express Orange Bowl, Colorado wore the patch dutifully, but not Notre Dame. Do you know what the Notre Dame patch read? It read Notre Dame.

No doubt the cerebral trust at Notre Dame reasoned that if you advertise, say, Mobil on your jerseys, you run the risk of killing a donation from Exxon.

Other schools today may be mad at this entrepreneur, but, within that golden dome, someone is doing a little thinking.