Its "origin story", as it were.

It was a tiny Catholic school in the middle of nowhere overcoming the religious bigotry driven attempts to blackball and smother ND football.

It is the history of barnstorming all over the country as an independent and becoming fairly well known for it.

It is thumbing its nose at Michigan, the Big Ten, football conferences in general and by extension, all of the Notre Dame haters everywhere.

Football independence and barnstorming across America made Notre Dame..Notre Dame.

Without it, it would not have a national fan base and would be something like Northwestern.

Without its history of independence, ND would simply be..something else.

History matters.

ND's history is different from State U or Boston College, or Duke.

It is the core of ND's identity, the school, not just the football program.

This is what fans of other schools just don't seem to get.

They balance the scales and, if joining a conference appears to be beneficial, are perplexed when ND flatly rejects the idea out of hand.

Imagine, ND (a school 90 miles from Big Ten headquarters, sitting right in the middle of Big Ten Country) rejected the Big Ten's membership offer in 1999.

No other school in the Midwest or East would have done that.

But, none had ND's history, either.

Since ND became successful as an independent, ND fans see dark forces trying to force it to throw that all away..in order to benefit others more than ND.

(then we can get into national school aspirations, national recruiting needs and other things).















[Post edited by TerryD at 01/21/2022 2:32PM]