I have no argument with that....
What I will argue with, however, is if Coach Freeman is let go for "not winning the big one"...even though he is graduating players at a very high rate. There have been a lot of good coaches shown the door at ND since Lou. Willingham, Weiss, and Kelly were good coaches....(I know Kelly left more or less on his terms, but his frustrations with the above discussion were well known, and were what lead him to leave...his goals are a National Champtionship.)
Again, I'm not disagreeing with anything you or other posters have said. Just pointing out that players and coaches who have realistic aspirations of winning a national title are likely to avoid ND. Players in the program may have changing priorites and choose to leave. This is the reality.
It would be interesting if the B1G, SEC, and Big12 choose to leave the NCAA in their dust and go completley separate in FB and MBB. Would ND choose to be the torchbearer in going back to a more traditional college athletics model...along with the leftovers of Div1?
Or do they want the money just as bad as everyone else?