Welcome | NDFB Teaser ?

Sorry for the wait. There won’t be much in the way of thematic consistency or journalistic standards at COS, but we’re excited to have you along for our journey to 100,000.

A good place to start is with the NDFB piece so many of you have been asking about. Unfortunately it can’t be published in its entirety until we come to terms with our staff data scientist (you know who you are) – here’s a preview/preamble for now.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The modern success of Notre Dame’s football program is an anachronism. 

Most of the school’s distinctive features – rural Indiana locale; religious affiliation; academic standards; small student body – are unattractive to high-level high school football players. If you reset college football today, Notre Dame would fall somewhere between Rice and Kansas in the sport’s hierarchy. 

Nevertheless, and by the grace of god, Notre Dame persists as a top football program and, despite recent shortcomings, maintains the capacity to compete with the sport’s elite. This reality is overwhelmingly attributable to its large fanbase. The attention Notre Dame commands from fans across America and the world assures that it plays before packed crowds; demands national telecasts, including a relationship with a broadcaster unlike any other in college football; receives outsize attention from the media, guaranteeing recognition for games and players; and generates revenue sufficient to hire top coaches and build state-of-the-art facilities. This phenomenon is a necessary, if not the essential, condition for recruiting top athletes to South Bend. Other FBS schools offer its academic rigor (think Duke or Northwestern); Catholic identity (Boston College); and charming winters (South Dakota State), but none combine these features in a package that features national relevance. 

But the Irish hegemon is shrinking.

Soft signs indicate a diminishing fanbase. Not long ago, a lottery determined access to Notre Dame Stadium, making it the toughest ticket in the sport. Today, the school no longer even pretends that all of its games are sold out. In games that do fill up, a disturbingly large portion of the stands are painted in opposing colors, with visiting fans drawn to the sport’s greatest museum. Yes, it’s tough to get to South Bend, and game weekends are expensive, and CFB on TV is pretty appealing. But it’s always been tough and expensive to get to South Bend, and high definition TV isn’t exactly stopping Ohio State fans from flocking to the Horseshoe. 

The Irish once commanded the largest TV audiences in the sport; viewership is now declining, despite recent strong seasons. NBC, the Irish patron saint of television, has elected to demote several of Notre Dame broadcasts to its second tier platform, NBSCN, in recent years. And social media presence – an indicator dismissed by some gray hairs, but a crucial reference of influence among both the peers of recruits and the future of college football fans – is lagging.

This could, and should, have been predicted. A private school, it does not attract the loyalty of its surrounding area as effectively as other blue bloods. Notre Dame’s small undergraduate and graduate programs don’t compare to the 12,000 new student-fans Michigan prints annually. Membership in the Catholic Church is declining in America and, even more devastatingly, religiosity is diminishing; young fans won’t tune in to Notre Dame simply because it represents the best of Catholicism like their grandparents did. 

In short, and in order to remain competitive, Notre Dame needs to find more fans.