Rick Blaine is an alumnus of Notre Dame and an award-winning author who writes occasionally for Yahoo. He is unhappy about this marketing sham, he is angry and wants everyone to know about it.
The Irish open their schedule against the Midshipmen across the Atlantic in Dublin, Ireland. There's no sports-related reason for this. Europe has shown little interest in American football, no matter how hard the NFL tried to force it on them. Ireland has no actual connection to Notre Dame. The school was founded by French priests, and the Fighting Irish nickname was the invention of hyperbolic sportswriters in a uniquely stylized era of American journalism.
No, Notre Dame plays Navy in Dublin for purely marketing reasons. It sounds cool. It seems unique. It could translate into some TV ratings based on curiosity, and it allowed the university to sell travel packages to alumni and fans at a healthy markup.Playing Navy in Ireland might make some sense to NBC, which gets to kick off the 2012 college football season at 9:00am ET with no competition from other televised games. It likely makes for an exciting travel excuse for the well-to-do alumni and fans who fly to Dublin with the game as the centerpiece of their trip. But for the Notre Dame team, and its prospects on the field of play, it makes no sense at all.
via yahoo sports
It appears he is the only one who thinks it's that bad of an idea -
