This is not a vent board or any other kind of therapy. Before you hit the POST button, ask yourself if your contribution will add to the level of discussion going on.

Important notes on articles:

• Please do not copy entire articles into your post; rather, provide links to them.. We are now links-only for ALL Internet publications. If only a small portion of the article pertains to your post, Fair Use allows you to copy those one or two paragraphs, provided you cite the author's name and the publication for which he writes. Otherwise, put a link in the HTTP Link box.
• Even if you're copying a reference to an article, provide a link to the page from which the article came. We're trying to cut down on duplicate topics, and the posting process will check the link to your article to see if it's already being discussed on this board. At the very least, you'll save yourself some grief on the boards.
• If your first reaction after reading the article you're going to share is the author is uninformed / stupid / a jerk / all of the above, it's not worth sharing with anyone. Not every article needs to be discussed. The more the hair-pulling articles are discussed (e.g. ESPN Page 2), the more the authors will write hair-pulling articles.

Post being replied to

I think you're missing at least 2 by tf86

(vi) His dalliance with the ACC which nearly put us in that conference as a football member; and (vii) his renegotiation of the original BCS deal.

Granted, (vi) did not achieve its intended results, so some may be tempted to place it in the "no harm, no foul" file. But I don't think White should get any credit for the NCAA bailing him out of his own stupidity. Moreover, it showed that he did not value independence, nor did he have any clue as to what helped make ND different. Further, he was willing to give up a cornerstone of the football program (very prematurely, at a minimum, as it turned out) to put us in a conference with which we had little history in common, and little if any institutional connection other than the fact that there are a number of good academic schools in the conference (which, by and large, do their student-athletes a disservice on the academic side of things.)

As for (vii), I'll willingly plead guilty to not knowing all of the facts, so it may very well be that White negotiated the best deal for ND that he could get. With that said, the perception that deal created was that: (a) White had an implicit, if not explicit, willingness to make ND a junior partner to the power conferences; and (b) given the provision that ND would get $1 million in years that it didn't qualify for the BCS, that he valued monetizing the brand over using the brand to produce excellence.

I've mentioned on here before that I'm pretty tight with a guy who played football at Tennessee back in the day. White's son is now their AD. When he was first hired, my exact words to my friend were, "I hope for your sake that he's a better AD for your school than his father was for my school."

White may have been a competent AD for about 85% of all Division 1 institutions. At Notre Dame, however, he was an unmitigated train wreck. Say what you will about Jack, at least he has kept ND football at least nominally independent. I doubt White would have been able to do the same, had he remained in office over this time period, or even that he would have been interested in doing so. On the other hand, if you want to argue that Jack has doubled down on some of White's other annoying tendencies, such as prioritizing monetizing the brand over utilizing it to promote excellence, you'll get no argument from me.