Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Once the committee is in place, Swarbrick said they will start to determine the data they'll use to pick the four teams. He expects the new rankings will be a better judge of strength of schedule and a team's actual talent by ignoring preseason polls. He also said the committee will be more likely to forgive a loss in tough conditions — an overtime game in a difficult road environment, or a game where the losing team's star player is out with an injury. That allows for more human judgment than the more rigid computer and poll system that typically punished a team that lost, especially later in the season, during the BCS era. "I'll be shocked if there isn't a sig- nificant difference, whenever it's released, between the selection committee's rankings and the polls," Swarbrick said. Among his other projects on a more national scope this year, Swarbrick is also a part of a group searching for better ways to compensate studentathletes for their time. The idea to pay some or all studentathletes a stipend has been debated for the past several years. Those athletes, especially football and basketball players, generate a huge amount of money for their schools each year and put in a considerable amount of time to do so. Opponents of the idea are afraid that stipends would strip away the last bits Notre Dame-USC Extended Through 2023, Arizona State On In 2014 Notre Dame's agreement to play five Atlantic Coast Conference teams in football each season (starting in 2014) will force athletics director Jack Swarbrick and the Irish to shift through some scheduling issues during the next three or four years. The Irish will have fewer opportunities to play traditional Big Ten opponents and may have to renege on some of their plans in order to fit all of the ACC teams into the schedule. The future of Notre Dame's schedule started to take shape this summer with two major decisions. The Irish agreed to continue their annual battle with rival USC through 2023 and also settled a dispute about an upcoming three-game series with Arizona State. Begun in 1926, the Notre Dame-USC series has been played annually, other than a three-year hiatus from 1943-45. The two agreed this June to extend their intersectional series for at least the next decade despite numerous league changes. "Not only are we pleased to be able to extend our storied series with Notre Dame, but we were able to keep the game on the traditional dates of Thanksgiving weekend in Los Angeles and mid-October in South Bend," USC athletics director Pat Haden said. Until John McKay's arrival as the USC head coach in 1960, Notre Dame's game with the Trojans was played in late November — home or away — most often as the regular-season finale. McKay lobbied to have the game at Notre Dame moved to October, when the northern Indiana autumn is still relatively tame compared to the frost that often accompanies late November days. In addition to the five future ACC contests per year, the three annual games on the preferred list for Notre Dame remain USC, Navy (uninterrupted since 1927) and Stanford. The game with the Cardinal allows Notre Dame to visit California every year in November.