quote:
Notre Dame is scared of playing a lower mid tier SEC team. Chances are they would be in a battle until the end. They want to play an upper tier team and hope their boys can rise to the occasion to keep it respectable then use that close loss as an inroad to recruiting the south east. I am sure they would prefer to play a team like Georgia, LSU, or Florida. Those states have large recruiting areas where the fence is down for recruiting. When they said SEC they really meant about 3-5 teams. The three mentioned plus the 2 in Alabama if they could meet them in Atlanta.

A logical, well-conceived post on tRant. The sky if falling.

Basically, Notre Dame came out beating their chest about wanting to compete with the SEC -- and we called their bluff. We don't worry about recruiting inroads into Mississippi from a northeast team. Lately, even Bama and LSU have had a hard enough time penetrating the border of MS -- and LSU is closer to over half the population of the state than MSU/OM are.

It's a win-win for us. They either say yes and we get a showcase with IMO the most overrated program in the country with no real expectations on us. Or they say no and we can show Slive where we tried to improve our schedule -- before locking down directional Alabama and Louisiana teams for the next 10 years...