[stupac2]

Sometimes you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. 

To play contrarian here anti-ND sentiment is a minority view - at least on game day.  The atmosphere in Stanford stadium was ELECTRIC for the 2016 N.otre Dame game just as it was in 2010, 2012 and 2014.  This year's game gave us the best pre-kickoff stadium buzz of the season and was the only game where the crowd stormed the field after a win.  I've got a picture of a friend at the 30 yard line thanking a beaming Brennan Scarlett on my cellphone I sure didn't get after we played the mighty Knights of UCF.  As a fan would you trade the ND atmosphere for that seen against our past OOC foes - say TCU, Navy, Sac State, Duke or Wake Forest?  Or predict that atmosphere against Kansas St in 2016 or 2021?

TIME TRAVEL!

Anyway, sure, the stadium was rocking, but with, what, 1/3 ND fans? It was also rocking against Oregon, you just don't remember because we lost. And I don't think "the game atmosphere is only good when the stadium is full of opposing fans" is necessarily a great reason to schedule games that draw a ton of opposing fans.

Setting aside a fans perspective, there is value for our playoff aspirations in playing a late season game against a blue chip, ranked rival.  There is value in a showcase game for recruits who must love it as they were all over our sideline this year.  There is value in playing the University of Dead Fake Girlfriends to the Stanford players who look forward to the game and are pumped by the rivalry.

No, there's no value for our playoff aspirations. What value did it give us this year? If we had beaten Oregon, it wouldn't matter if we had played ND or UC Davis, we would've been in the playoff with a win. (Well, and a win the next week.) This idea that the conference values hard schedules was exposed as a complete load of horseshit this year. If the committee valued hard schedules we would've been in, we weren't so they don't. Until proven otherwise scheduling like Alabama is the way to go.

As for the other ones, I sure hope our players aren't getting more keyed up for ND than for other teams. That's how you lose big upsets. Maybe it matters for recruits, but I think they'd just come to some other game.

So .... why the Cardboard hate for playing ND?  I mean, the Leprechaun is ugly and the fans entitled but their demeanor improves after a thorough Stanford shellacking.  Heck, perhaps we're doing the rest of CFB nation a favor by playing N.otre Dame!

For me, it's a few things:

1) The game screws up our schedule. This is beyond argument, it's a total pain for our schedule.
2) We're more likely to lose it than pretty much any other OOC home-and-home we could schedule. This is partly because ND has been good lately (annoyingly) and partly because they get a ton of home cooking.
3) I am really rather quite extremely bothered by the love they continue to get despite having gotten worse results in the last decade than some G5 programs. I want them to fade into irrelevance. Maybe repeatedly pasting them would help that, but our playing them gives them legitimacy too.
4) I really hate it when we play and people pretend like the universities are on the same level academically. They're not, and the football programs especially aren't. They deserve some credit for being willing to kick out cheaters, but really that's more of an indictment of everyone else.

I could probably keep going but it doesn't matter because we'll never end it.

[stupac2]

Sometimes you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. 

To play contrarian here anti-ND sentiment is a minority view - at least on game day.  The atmosphere in Stanford stadium was ELECTRIC for the 2016 N.otre Dame game just as it was in 2010, 2012 and 2014.  This year's game gave us the best pre-kickoff stadium buzz of the season and was the only game where the crowd stormed the field after a win.  I've got a picture of a friend at the 30 yard line thanking a beaming Brennan Scarlett on my cellphone I sure didn't get after we played the mighty Knights of UCF.  As a fan would you trade the ND atmosphere for that seen against our past OOC foes - say TCU, Navy, Sac State, Duke or Wake Forest?  Or predict that atmosphere against Kansas St in 2016 or 2021?

TIME TRAVEL!

Anyway, sure, the stadium was rocking, but with, what, 1/3 ND fans? It was also rocking against Oregon, you just don't remember because we lost. And I don't think "the game atmosphere is only good when the stadium is full of opposing fans" is necessarily a great reason to schedule games that draw a ton of opposing fans.

Setting aside a fans perspective, there is value for our playoff aspirations in playing a late season game against a blue chip, ranked rival.  There is value in a showcase game for recruits who must love it as they were all over our sideline this year.  There is value in playing the University of Dead Fake Girlfriends to the Stanford players who look forward to the game and are pumped by the rivalry.

No, there's no value for our playoff aspirations. What value did it give us this year? If we had beaten Oregon, it wouldn't matter if we had played ND or UC Davis, we would've been in the playoff with a win. (Well, and a win the next week.) This idea that the conference values hard schedules was exposed as a complete load of horseshit this year. If the committee valued hard schedules we would've been in, we weren't so they don't. Until proven otherwise scheduling like Alabama is the way to go.

As for the other ones, I sure hope our players aren't getting more keyed up for ND than for other teams. That's how you lose big upsets. Maybe it matters for recruits, but I think they'd just come to some other game.

So .... why the Cardboard hate for playing ND?  I mean, the Leprechaun is ugly and the fans entitled but their demeanor improves after a thorough Stanford shellacking.  Heck, perhaps we're doing the rest of CFB nation a favor by playing N.otre Dame!

For me, it's a few things:

1) The game screws up our schedule. This is beyond argument, it's a total pain for our schedule.
2) We're more likely to lose it than pretty much any other OOC home-and-home we could schedule. This is partly because ND has been good lately (annoyingly) and partly because they get a ton of home cooking.
3) I am really rather quite extremely bothered by the love they continue to get despite having gotten worse results in the last decade than some G5 programs. I want them to fade into irrelevance. Maybe repeatedly pasting them would help that, but our playing them gives them legitimacy too.
4) I really hate it when we play and people pretend like the universities are on the same level academically. They're not, and the football programs especially aren't. They deserve some credit for being willing to kick out cheaters, but really that's more of an indictment of everyone else.

I could probably keep going but it doesn't matter because we'll never end it.