with a gentle pat on the head.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/dennis-dodd/22247387/notre-ad-explains-wh...

You know it's a slow news day when you guys start telling me stuff that's said in booster clubs,” the Notre Dame AD said Wednesday at the ACC spring meetings.

...

“We all recognize that stuff you say at a booster club or a pep rally generally [can be like that],” Swarbrick said. “I take no umbrage at what someone says at either of those two functions.”

...

“The math is pretty simple for us,” he said.

Most BCS conferences operate with an assumption there will be seven home games and five road games. Notre Dame, Swarbrick explained, would have four of those road games spoken for every year. ND hopes to maintain the rivalries with Navy, Stanford and USC. Then factor in the five ACC games the Irish will begin playing in the new scheduling agreement. Two or three of those are going to be on the road each year.

The four road games are going to look like this:

No. 1 road game, ACC

No. 2, ACC

No. 3, ACC or Navy

No. 4, USC or Stanford

That leaves one game available for a home-and-home opponent.

“We are making, and will continue to make, tough choices,” Swarbrick said.

Of course Dodd shows a bit of lack of understanding of ND football history with his final paragraph, but I can understand why it looks curious from the outside (and from someone probably not aware we are cutting back on playing MSU and Purdue as well)

It sounds like Notre Dame would have had to make a choice in dropping Navy, USC or Stanford to make room for Michigan. That wasn't happening. But that still doesn't answer why Michigan was dropped instead of, say, Purdue or Michigan State from the Big Ten.

edit. Perhaps we should send Dodd this quiz.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/tbroman/NDopponents