I have some questions:

1. In each solar system, who will be Pluto?

2. Which solar system will have the bigger sun?

3. I like our Solar System the way it is. Will one of these solar systems remain ours? If so, who will be the sun of the new one? Alabama? And ours, will our Sun now be the NCAA and will it burn out in a few seasons?

4. What will ND do? Will we orbit the Sun in our present orbit - in the Goldilocks Zone, or will we be forced outward, toward Mars and live in perpetual winter with a thin atmosphere, with no oceans that we can swim in or lay on the beach and watch attractive women in bikinis?

These are important questions. I gotsta know!

We used to sing that song at camp.

to the moon. One of these days.

Which solar system gets stuck with the Uranus Wolverines

Who gets the naming rights to "Sun"

Will we still get to keep our moon or will it wander away

every indication over the past few decades is a resounding "NO" to that question.

Go down to FCS?

We've been following the money since Rockne was the head coach. Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.

ND alumni want competitive football.

/continues to monitor the landscape

This isn't hard.

Despite the Big 10's insistence on appearing like they care about academics, I assume the Big 10 and SEC have the same financial interests.

Without knowing more, I'd assume Ohio St, Nebraska, and Penn St would sign onto whatever the SEC wants. I could see Wisconsin and Michigan potentially resisting, but I assume money talks so they'll change.

Non generate side. With Wisconsin and what’re other Big 10 schools would like to come along.

Ditto USC<, Texas, Miami, UCLA, and a critical mass of other schools who don’t want to throw in with the SEC charade.

They will throw in with whatever makes them the most money. They are every bit the money whore that OSU is.

a "money whore."

I'm not sure there is a more dishonest and disingenuous athletic department head in the country than Jack swarbrick, and under his leadership ND is definitely a money whore.

Nominal independence. Then again, that's the one that would probably be the straw that broke the camel's back, if he gave up on it.

he's positioning for a bigger payday down the line, don't kid yourself.

Noting k=new to see here.

Of course, usually the money follows so it’s hard to separate the two.

Top academic school. And they would be a better fit with ND, Stanford, Wisconsin, PSU, maybe Texas, Miami, Nebraska, etc.

The time is now for ND to lend its weight and standing to that effort. Not 6 months from now. Articulate a mission, a justification, a competing and preferable and marketable option.

Or ND Stadium will meet the same fate as Port Plaza mall. Lost in Younkers.

USC? Texas? The Texas that just jumped to the SEC for the money? Miami? Yes, a veritable paragon of virtue. Nebraska? That’s a shit school. Penn State? The school that covered up a child molester for decades?

These schools are not our friend. They do not share any of our values.

Get into than ND for some of their programs. Also, I was absolutely stunned when taking my 3 kids on college tours. There is one and only one other college that is run almost exactly like ND… USC. The freshman year of studies concepts, dorm life, etc. the campus is also fairly compact and self contained v spread randomly around the city like many of its peer city based colleges. In 2017 they had guaranteed dorms through junior year and were actively building more dorms to increase that to a senior guarantee too.

Along similar lines for state schools - I couldn’t believe where florida is ranked now. My daughter is a rising sophomore there. It was her fallback to ND. They are top 5 public schools now - but are ranked 26th overall for 2021. ND was 19th for example.

ND remains unique with single sex dorms and the dorms being a mix of all 4 classes v single class per dorm in large part. ND is still the better true full college experience because of campus life. But… ND no longer has a wide academic margin on a lot of state schools we used to look down on 20-30 years ago.

1. USC isn't a state school.
2. The dorm guarantee at USC may have arisen, at least in part, due to the fact that the adjacent part of Los Angeles to the USC campus isn't exactly the safest place in the world.

This thread is about both USC and state schools (texas and a list of others). My post is that USC academically is nearly a clone of ND and the way they run the university as a whole was shockingly similar to ND - down to the dorm life aspect too.

They have always owned a lot of the land around the school and/or influenced it heavily for student living in apartments. Their push for expanded dorms goes beyond safety. It’s part of a recognition of what campus life for more than just your freshman year brings to the table.

My cousin went to ND (1983 grad - I’m 89). He is a graduate of ND, harvard and Stanford. 2 of his kids went to ND, one to Carnegie Mellon and the other to USC graduating 2018. He will say the same thing about how shocked he was how similar USC is to ND. He will also tell you he made his wife write the checks for payments to USC - he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Except Penn State. Now that’s a shit school - but for reasons independent of their academic standards.

I'm not saying it's an Ivy League-caliber school academically, but in the greater scheme of things, it's certainly not a bad school academically. I did a check on US News rankings recently, and if memory serves, Penn State was about smack dab in the middle of the Big Ten. If the sole issue were academics, I'd be okay with my kid attending Penn State. Of course, it's not, so I'm not.

The question isn't whether the B1G will play along with the SEC and do whatever Super League type thing ends up happening - they will. The question is will everyone else follow. My guess is most of them will. Including us.

I'm not sure how, after Crossroads and JumboTrons and everything else they've done to very much push their chips in on football, they could justify what amounts to a drop to the 2nd tier of big time football.

It’s worth a try and if we fail then we could still join the semi-pros.