© 2025 The Postliberals
My “X” feed over the past week has been filled with posts about Notre Dame football. The algorithms are working well – doubtless based on my past interest, I’m seeing a lot of commentary about Notre Dame from people whom I don’t know, but who have strong opinions about the team, the players, the coach, and tonight’s matchup with Penn State. While much of my feed is typically more political or theological, these newly-boosted sports posts seem to designed to appeal to outrage (and hence, continued scrolling) in the same way as political posts. No matter the sentiment, the comments are usually a mix of boosterism and denunciation, with rancor breeding rancor. Few teams in American sports seem to generate as much national opining as Notre Dame.
 |
The experience is surreal, because for most people who express any view about Notre Dame, it concerns their football team. For most Americans with an interest in sports, particularly football – which might, in fact, be most Americans – Notre Dame, like Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, etc., is a team. Commentary on sports networks discusses college football teams no differently than teams such as the Chiefs, the Bulls, and the Red Sox: who’s up, who’s down; who’s in, whose out; who’s good, who’s bad; who will win, who will lose.
For me, however, as a college professor, Notre Dame (as well as Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, etc.) is a university which, as part of its operations, has a football team. The football program at Notre Dame, as well as these others – certainly at all the schools in the playoffs, and not only those – is a very significant feature of the university, but far from the entirety of its identity, purpose, and activity. Unlike a professional sports team – which exists solely to play competitively against other sports teams – university teams are merely one feature of the larger entity of which it is a part. A significant part, yes. But a part.
By treating the “teams” as if they are indistinguishable from professional teams (in the wider commentariat), important distinctions are missed. And I’ve seen little notice or attention to one very salient and important point:
Notre Dame is the only university in the playoffs that’s unique. The rest (with one minor exception) are almost indistinguishable. Commentary that treats all “teams” as essentially the same phenomenon leads to a widespread ignorance of laudable uniqueness amid bland homogeneity.
Notre Dame is the only private and religious school regularly in the elite tiers of college football. It is the only Catholic school in the elite tier of college football. It is the only school with an academic ranking in the top-20 that is in the elite tier of college football. These strike me as noteworthy facts that are ignored when we treat the teams as if they were merely teams.
College football is dominated by large public universities, ones that (with few exceptions, such as Michigan) are not particularly lauded for their academic excellence. There is a strong correlation between elite football and mediocre academics, a correlation that I much doubt anyone thinks is coincidental. When Brian Kelly left Notre Dame left for LSU and the SEC, saying that it was impossible to win a national championship at Notre Dame, everyone knew what he was talking about.
Notre Dame is the only elite program that is an Independent - a fact that was denounced by Penn State’s coach, James Franklin. He demanded more “uniformity” - indeed, in his recognition of Notre Dame’s uniqueness, explicitly underscoring the trajectory of college football toward complete institutional uniformity. He is joined by legions of critics of Notre Dame’s Independence, who take it as a something of a personal offense that Notre Dame does not belong to a conference.
Such critics evince a woeful ignorance of college football - and American - history. It’s striking that as the nation celebrates the first collegiate football playoff game coached by two African-American coaches, that one of those coaches is seemingly entirely unaware of the anti-Catholic bias that led to Notre Dame’s status as an independent. In the early 1900s, regional powerhouses such as Michigan blocked Notre Dame’s efforts to join the “Western Conference” - the predecessor to the Big 10 - out of anti-Catholic bias. Other nearby teams regularly refused to play Notre Dame for the same reason, leading coach Knute Rockne to develop a national football schedule, traveling as far east as New York and as far south as Georgia and as far West as California to play any university that was willing, at a time when travel was mainly by bus or train. “Independence” was a survival tactic that today not only serves Notre Dame well, but allows it to maintain traditional rivalries - e.g., with Navy, USC, and Stanford - at a time when alignments are occurring that blithely ignore history and tradition.
Notre Dame’s early national profile led to rise of “subway alumni,” so-called because so many were initially in the New York area. Catholics around the country began rooting for Notre Dame because it was the one visible Catholic institution in America that showed Catholics that they could do anything their Protestant superiors could do - and better. Like my father before me, I was required to watch Notre Dame football every Saturday on NBC with as much fidelity as attending Mass the next day (and sometimes even more!). When I left Georgetown for Notre Dame (having previously taught at Princeton), my father put his hand on my shoulder and said (in all seriousness), “You’ve finally made something of yourself.”
That national profile, of course, has led to an equally large legion of Notre Dame haters - those who hate any “national team,” not unlike the widespread sentiment toward the New York Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys. Yet, if the betting markets are any indication, Notre Dame is indeed as close as any to being “America’s Team.”
 |
There was a time when private schools were more regularly in the mix, but programs such as Stanford and USC have faded in recent years (not to mention the long-faded stature of the Ivy football programs). Notre Dame is now among the only of the nation’s many private schools that is regularly ranked in the top-twenty.
There was a time when religiously-affiliated schools were more regularly in the mix, and this year saw the brief rise of SMU as a contender, seeded 11th in the new 12-team format, but routed (like a few other lower seeds) in the first round 38-10 by Penn State. In the view of football cognoscenti, they should not have been included at all in the playoffs on merit, but were included only on the basis of an automatic bid for conference champions.
And long gone are the days when other Catholic universities (such as Fordham) had top-tier football programs, with only Notre Dame and Boston College remaining in Division 1 Bowl tier, and Boston College but an afterthought these days.
What’s worth noticing, then, is that Notre Dame is peculiarly, even miraculously distinct. It is not exaggeration to state that if one of the big public universities in (say) the previous round of eight universities were to disappear ( very little of unique distinction would be lost. Its faculty are largely fungible. Its curricula, departments, research foci, and even mission statements, are largely identical to any other large state university. Its student base is regionally similar. There is almost nothing that large, flagship state universities today do that would represent an irreplaceable loss to the world were one to disappear.
I don’t believe the same can be said of Notre Dame. Beyond its top-tier football programs (which already makes it unique among private universities), it is the uncontested top Catholic research university in the world. There are other great Catholic research universities - Boston College and Georgetown come to mind - but none of its Catholic peers have anything approaching the comparable financial resources of Notre Dame (thanks, in no small part, to the success of its football programs, directly and indirectly).
Of the great Catholic research universities, none aside from Notre Dame is actively seeking consistently to hire faculty and admit students aligned with its Catholic mission. Catholic University does a better job on this front, but it is an impoverished school, and few would count it among the nation’s elite research universities. Boston College has done a better job in recent years, but Notre Dame has a far more robust Catholic presence among the faculty and students. Georgetown - where I once taught - pays no attention whatsoever to hiring Catholic faculty, and rather has seemed for decades intent on hiring faculty (and admitting students) who actively disdain Catholicism.
Smaller Catholic liberal arts college justifiably crow about their greater fidelity to the Catholic intellectual tradition - Thomas Aquinas College, Benedictine College, University of Dallas come to mind - but it is far easier (though not easy) to integrate Catholicism in hiring, admissions, and curriculum at a small liberal arts college than a research university.
Beyond the Catholic dimension, few universities with a consistently top-tier football program also is regularly ranked academically in the top-20. According to the (very flawed) U.S. News and World Report rankings for top national universities, Notre Dame now stands at #18. Stanford (#5) is the highest ranked school with a legitimately excellent football team, and Vanderbilt and Michigan come in slightly below Notre Dame and outside the top-20, so it’s not impossible to combine academic excellence with a great academic program - but it’s very difficult, and all the more difficult for smaller, private universities. Football programs are expensive, large, and academically compromising. It’s a rare university that can combine those features.
Postliberal Order is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
With all this said, I’m among those many Catholic faculty (and many Catholics beyond Notre Dame) who lament its declining uniqueness. In the effort to attain ever more academic “respectability” and rise in the rankings, its hiring practices are intentionally undertaken to ape those of our “aspirational peers” - the Ivies and public Ivies. Hiring and tenure decisions are made on the basis of the same forms of assessment as those other schools. Departments increasingly mimic and become indistinguishable from those at secular institutions. In recent years there has been an effort to reduce the number of admitted Catholic students, to increase the “diversity” of our student body (as if Catholicism were not a religion of diversity). Broader efforts to pursue “DEI” initiatives have parroted those of other “elite” institutions. During the thirteen years I have been at Notre Dame, the university has become more like the Georgetown that I left than the Notre Dame I joined, minus the proximity to great restaurants and the power elite. If the university continues on its current trajectory, it will be increasingly indistinguishable from the likes of Georgetown, Duke, and Vanderbilt (albeit with far worse weather), aside from the high likelihood of maintaining an elite football program. Catholic “campus ministry” will become a separate wing of the university, no longer seen as the core from which all else emanates.
And at that point, the commentary on collegiate football “teams” will align with the truth: there will be as little difference between Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State - and Notre Dame - as between the Red Sox and the Yankees and the Cardinals. They will all just be “teams” at fairly identical institutions.
To the many fans of Notre Dame - those who “cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame” - please say a prayer amid your cheers that Notre Dame remain true, and even become truer, to its uniqueness. As you listen to the commentariat, refuse to accept the homogenizing narrative. Whether old Notre Dame prevails tonight or not, “what though the odds be great or small,” recognize that you are witnessing the miraculous: the presence of a university whose football program reflects the uniqueness of its university, a uniqueness that prevails only to the extent it remains true to its faith and tradition, and an improbable presence in the modern world that reduces all that it touches to utility, materialism, homogeneity, and ultimately, worldly mediocrity.
You're currently a free subscriber to Postliberal Order. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
| ||||||||||
© 2025 The Postliberals
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Unsubscribe
No comments:
Post a Comment