Irish Rejects Joining Big Ten

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 5, 1999 / 3:48 PM EST / CBS Sportsline

Notre Dame maintained the 111-year independence of its football program today when its board of trustees rejected joining the Big Ten.

With the Roman Catholic school's national identity at stake - and the future of its highly visible football team the pivotal issue - the board announced it would not join the conference.

The decision, announced at Notre Dame's new academic center just off Trafalgar Square in central London, hinged in part on money, and also on Notre Dame's ability to go it alone as more bowls align themselves with conferences.

The vote - a closely held secret until the end - should be welcomed by alumni and students at the South Bend, Ind., school, who overwhelmingly opposed joining the Big Ten.

Students have taken to chanting "No Big Ten" at basketball games, and Charles Lennon, director of the school's alumni association, estimated 99.5 percent of his members were against changing the school's unique "brand name" as an independent university.

The athletic department also is widely believed to have opposed joining the Big Ten, in the second overture the conference has made to Notre Dame in the last five years.

As an independent, Notre Dame pockets all of its gate receipts, all proceeds from bowl appearances, and an estimated $7 million annually in an exclusive TV contract with NBC - expected to jump to $8 million a year for the 2000-05 seasons.

The football team also plays from coast to coast, a talking point in enticing recruits to the South Bend campus.

As a Big Ten member, Notre Dame would have been part of a revenue-sharing program that splits up a portion of each school's gate receipts from football and basketball, bowl revenues, TV contracts and proceeds from the NCAA basketball tournament.

The Big Ten affiliation also would have made Notre Dame a member of the Committee on Intercollegiate Cooperation, a consortium of all 11 Big Ten schools and one-time conference member the University of Chicago.

Joining the CIC would have boosted Notre Dame's graduate programs, which lag far behind schools in the Big Ten, although it was also seen as a threat to Notre Dame's traditional emphasis on undergraduate education.

In October, the school's Faculty Senate voted 25-4 in favor of joining the CIC, but no mention of the Big Ten was made.

An academic affairs committee noted that private schools like Stanford and Northwestern, a Big Ten member, had not lost their national reputations by joining a conference.

Big Ten officials still are expected to pursue expansion, with reports naming Syracuse or Missouri as the likely candidates to be invited in to give the conference 12 members instead of an unwieldy 11.