Notre Dame is an independent in football, but they’re in a conference for everything else, why aren’t we all independent for football? Take the 64 teams in Power Five and make that one division, take the 64 teams in Group of Five, make that another division. We play for a championship, they play for a championship and no one else gets affected. Our sport’s different than everybody else — we only play once a week, travel’s not a big deal for football, but it is a big deal for other sports. So that’s my theory.”
Notre Dame also isn’t a research University that would benefit from being in a conference when competing for research funding.