Notre Dame hasn’t won a bowl since 1993. Eighty-nine teams have won bowls since Notre Dame’s last win! Does something seem fishy that the Mackerel Snappers would accept an invitation to play Hawaii in the Sheridan Hawaii bowl? Call it audacity. No one would question that this year was a disgrace for Notre Dame, so voyaging to the tropics for a Christmas Eve playing an absolutely non-contending team, this is supposed to make everything right? A win spares them from a losing season. It would break their long streak of failure in bowl competition. Let’s face it. These are all contrived solutions putting lipstick on the pig (as a popular 2008 expression would describe it) to conceal the obvious, what was once the team that defined college football success is a dysfunctional program sinking into irrelevance.

The world of college football has changed tremendously since Lou Holtz led the Fighting Irish into contention and quality bowl bids every season. The power conferences have become stronger where the battle for conference supremacy overtakes the significance of many of the legendary rivalries from through out the years. Being an independent was a badge of honor, a team good enough to line up games with the toughest competition nationwide and still have a near perfect record. However, another great legendary independent program, Penn State, saw the wisdom of conference play and joined the Big Ten where they would have to earn their reputation with teams already having a storied history like Ohio State and Michigan. Who could Penn State play that would create the prestige and rivalry of the Michigan/Ohio State game?

Perhaps it is time for Notre Dame to seek membership in one of the power conferences. It would make for sloppy math for them to become the eleventh team in the Big Ten, but they surely could add substantial gravitas to the Big East still reeling from being raided by the ACC for football powerhouses, Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College. The Big East will be the a lesser entity in the power conference scheme until they once again have ten committed teams fielding football programs in a world where the SEC and Big Ten, for instance, have negotitated very lucrative national television contracts.

It’s time for Notre Dame to step up and deal with the reality that they are playing in the 21st century and the rules for success have changed. How quickly conversation will become, "Notre Dame was one of those great teams before the turn of the century." Time marches on and South Bend, Indiana is no longer the incubator it once was for the NFL. Aside from Brady Quinn, what big name players have come to the pros since 2000? They have immediate needs that must be addressed before they can look at some of the bigger picture issues like conference play. Charley Weiss is a failure as a head coach. Still, the Notre Dame brass have decided to give Weiss one more year to get his house in order. Notre Dame also needs live bodies on the field who can play. That’s pretty much the head coach’s responsibility to sell the program.

The clock is ticking. Big improvements are long overdue. Realistically, the Fighting Irish might have two or three more years to get their program headed in the right direction before they become totally irrelevant and “win one for the Gipper,” “touchdown Jesus,” and all the other Notre Dame legends become ancient history with no relevant connection to modern times. Winning an irrelevant bowl on Christmas Eve is hardly a token gesture toward getting their football program headed in the right direction.

One more thing, Hawaii is no push over.