That stat alone is why ND should never join a conference. ND is not regional -- every other Division IA team but Stanford and maybe Duke is a regional school with a football team comprised of regional players on their roster.

Lookup any roster for any team from any power 5 conference -- you will be lucky to find 5 players that come from any state not bordering their own state (or same coast in the case of WA that pulls from "neighbor" CA).

Then layer on top of that ND fans have no desire to play the same dumbass schedule every single season. We want a rotation of different teams for 8 or more games each season. We want to play every conference -- not just a single conference.

Control. ND wants to control who we play, when, and under what terms and conditions. Only a weak minded person would ever willingly give control of anything to another person.

Our schedules already suck in comparison to what they could and should be -- largely because we stupidly agreed to 5 ACC games per year when at most we should have agreed to alternating 3 and 4 game schedules.

A few others, mainly private schools, may also fall outside the categorization: BC, Wake, Vanderbilt, Rice, Tulane and possibly BYU.

Charging $70+k / year requires most of these schools to have a genuine national draw. Many wouldn’t be viable at their targeted academic profile if overly reliant on a regional draw.

The academic orientation at Georgia Tech may also move it outside of a regional characterization.

You dont know your head from your ass

Graphic too.

This year's freshman class at UW is just 50% Wisconsin residents.

As they have reciprocal in state tuition. Many of the rest are from the Illinois diaspora and the balance are coasties.

Sorry Across it is as provincial a school as most others. In the Big1? (A conference of fairly regional borgs) I'd put it no better than third behind NW (big gap), UM (slightly smaller gap) then UW. Purdue and Indiana may have arguments here but...... it's Indiana

Wisconsin and Michigan have coasties. Iowa and to a lesser extent, IU, do not

...and was false when I attended IU in the mid-1990s. I can't find a state-by-state breakdown of IU's student body, but according to promotional materials from when IU played in the Pinstripe Bowl in 2015, students from New York and New Jersey alone account for ten percent of IU-Bloomington's enrollment. It's also worth noting that a non-trivial percentage of in-state students are commuters or non-traditional students who aren't part of campus social life, so living on or near campus it feels more geographically diverse than the numbers would suggest. Of course, it doesn't compare to ND's geographical diversity, but Big Ten schools aren't the provincial backwaters you imagine. (None of this is to disagree with the main point that ND shouldn't join the Big Ten).

My own experience from 20 years ago in a decent size Long Island public school I had 4 classmates go to IU that I can remember, one buddy go to Wisconsin and maybe 12 to 15 go to Michigan,

There’s a big Chicago contingent, certainly, but they have a large NY/NJ population, especially in the Greek system and in the business school. Big Ohio contingent there as well.

Nonetheless, all of them are regional schools. I’d bet none have more than 10% from more than a state away except maybe Michigan.

The Greek system at IU has become a draw

Contrast this with nd which has CA, Ny, NJ and Florida in their top 7 or 8

Call it the Billy Joel demographic. Of course it is not as national as ND but it is a fine school with breadth and depth and some niches (real estate, banking, dairy science) that are among the top ranked.

that the Mifflin block party is a lot of fun and they definitely have their share of coeds with questionable moral standards, which is a definite plus.

...bull semen.

From Two Bulls, Nine Million Dairy Cows

I’m surprised that Across has heard of it.

As in Schreiber. And a couple other giants. Most people on this board ate Schreiber products today. Or yesterday.

I'm thinking of businesses with present/prior ND connections - Sargento in Plymouth and Gehl Foods in Germantown.

When the Gehl family sold the business to private equity in 2015, they gave each employee $10,000 - 5 to 401(k) and 5 in cash. Katherine (ND 1988) was the President at that time. Gehl was a pioneer in the non-refrigerated dairy industry, aka nacho cheese.

When you throw in Stayer from Johnsonville Sausage and the Miller family history, ND has beer, cheese and brats covered.

Socialist who didn't get into any f the Ivies, UM or Northwester demographic.

Whatever you want to call it it is noticeable,but not sizable.

I agree that it is a great school ( my godson is a proud grad and my brother a season ticket holder), but it's a regional school.

A NY transplant to Madison.