Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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54 SEPT. 20, 2025 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED T hat Purdue has reappeared on Notre Dame football's relevance scale for the second time in a five-year re- vival window is a subtle nudge at what could have been. Even roughly a quarter of a century later after the forever football inde- pendent seriously dabbled with a new reality, it's an intriguing hypothetical: What if the Irish had joined the Big Ten in football and everything else? Would Notre Dame be better off had the very public 10-month study in 1998-99 — or some less-transparent, less-thorough sequels — moved the Irish brass to say abso-bloody-lutely to the league's overture at a press confer- ence in London, England, of all places? And where the actual answer on Feb. 4, 1999, from then-Notre Dame president Rev. Edward A. Malloy and 39 members of the school's board of trust- ees was "not on your Nelly." The implications go far beyond the up- coming 89th nonconference clash with Purdue Sept. 20, and the first staged at Notre Dame Stadium since 2021, instead counting in league standings. Notre Dame's identity as an indepen- dent, the study found, was too high of a price to sacrifice, confirmed by Notre Dame finance professor (now emeritus) Richard G. Sheehan who put an actual late '90s cost of ceasing to declare inde- pendence at $8.5 million a year. The biggest fear is that if the Irish football program did go through a long drought, its identity in the Big Ten would shift to be just another mid- western school rather than something unique and one of college football's strongest brands, even in lean times. And at that time, Notre Dame was go- ing through the start of a flat post-Lou Holtz stretch. Using the Purdue series as just one small part of illustrating that, Holtz's Irish won all 11 meetings between the two formerly annual in-state rivals. From the first of Bob Davie's five sea- sons as Holtz's successor, in 1997, to 2007 — the first year Notre Dame football could have been fully integrated, the study said, had the Irish said yes — their advantage in the Purdue series moderated to 6-5. Since then, the Irish are 9-0 and com- ing off a 66-7 waxing of the Boilermakers last September in West Lafayette, Ind., in the first of this five-game recommitment. What else would have been different about Saturday's 3:30 p.m. matinee at Notre Dame Stadium on NBC/Peacock? Irish fans have known for months that this was a mid-afternoon kick time, which helps immensely in planning flights and other travel considerations for a fan base that pulls big numbers from far outside the school's driving-friendly South Bend radius. As a Big Ten member, you're told when to play and sometimes as little as six days ahead of time. And given Purdue's projected trajectory in the Big Ten standings this season, a year after being the first-ever 18th-place fin- isher, this matchup could have easily been kicked off the major networks and pushed to the Big Ten Network. And maybe even on a Friday night instead of Saturday. The purely football pragmatic side of being a football independent admittedly has some strong cons to go with some sneaky strong pros. Former Irish defen- sive coordinator Al Golden lamented last year about how much more challenging it was to prepare X's and O's being an inde- pendent team with not a lot of familiarity in its opponents and not a lot of continu- ity in playing styles from week to week. Irish head coach Marcus Freeman, who played in the Big Ten as a linebacker, was asked last week ahead of the Texas A&M clash how that discontinuity affected him as a head coach and if there was a positive flip side and what might that be? "I think the challenge is that you, at times, don't have a familiarity with your opponent that you would maybe in con- ference," he said, "where you can see the same opponent year after year." Then again, Purdue, a team the Irish faced just 12 months ago, not only has a new head coach and staff, but an NCAA-high 82 new faces on its roster, including an FBS-high 54 transfers. Where getting exposed to large doses of unfamiliarity during the regular sea- son paid off last season for Notre Dame, though, was in the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. "I think for us, in terms of seeing dif- ferent types of schemes, playing in dif- ferent places geographically, the differ- ent locations you play in — those things help you when you're in the postseason," Freeman said. "You're used to seeing all these different types of offenses and defenses and being in different places. "We really utilize it. We value our in- dependence, and we truly look at it as a positive thing for our program." That's not to say that another seismic college football realignment that per- haps cannibalized Notre Dame's home for most of its other sports, the ACC, couldn't change the calculus. Same with an economic shift, like the one in 2022 that separated the SEC and the Big Ten from the other power conference, but that Notre Dame was able to find a fi- nancial counterpunch for. But for now, Notre Dame's four-game run in the CFP and coming up just 11 points short of a national title silenced many of the knee-jerk "join a conference" choruses. Well, except for a slow summer day on sports talk radio, perhaps. "It's a big part of us. We're not em- barrassed about it," Malloy said back in 1999 on Independent's Day. "Love us or hate us but watch us and come out to games. That's a part of Notre Dame." Until further notice. ✦ Notre Dame has won its last nine matchups against Purdue, but a study showed that the Irish might not have dominated the Boilermakers like that had they joined the Big Ten a quarter century ago. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Independence Vs. Big Ten: A 'What If' That Still Echoes Eric Hansen covers Notre Dame athletics for On3, with a focus on Irish football. He can be reached on X @ EHansenND THE DEEP READ ERIC HANSEN