The University of Notre Dame is currently renovating its football stadium to add classroom buildings -- and more seating, specifically premium seating -- to the venerable venue. A video board will be installed in the Campus Crossroads project, too. Could a scenario exist in which Notre Dame's 80,000-plus seat stadium with all modern bells and whistles doesn't play host to any major college football games?
The Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, told the New York Times that indeed could be the case if the NCAA mandated college athletes had to be paid.
But he adamantly opposes a model in which college sheds what is left of its amateur ways for a semiprofessional structure — one in which universities pay their athletes. “Our relationship to these young people is to educate them, to help them grow,” he says. “Not to be their agent for financial gain.”
And if that somehow comes to pass, he says, Notre Dame will leave the profitable industrial complex that is elite college football, boosters be damned, and explore the creation of a conference with like-minded universities.
That’s right: Notre Dame would take its 23.9-karat-gold-flecked football helmets and play elsewhere.
“Perhaps institutions will make decisions about where they want to go — a semipro model or a different, more educational model — and I welcome that,” Father Jenkins says. “I wouldn’t consider that a bad outcome, and I think there would be schools that would do that.”
The entire story is a good look into Jenkins' worldview, in which Notre Dame is a strong university with or without its football program. His most important goal is to maintain and grow the university's academic reputation, and if it had to pay football players, he would see that as detrimental to his vision.
Finally, there is the pending lawsuit filed against the N.C.A.A. and the Power 5 conferences by the well-known sports lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, who argues that the value of student-athletes has been illegally capped by athletic scholarships. If he prevails: an open market.
Or, as Father Jenkins puts it: “Armageddon.”
“That’s when we leave,” he says. “We will not tolerate that. Then it really does become a semipro team.”
Whether Jenkins and Notre Dame would actually follow through on that threat if ever confronted with it remains to be seen. Leaving major college athletics would mean leaving billions on the table -- except Jenkins told the New York Times leaving major college athletics wouldn't impact the university's revenue.