Blacked Out

When fans across the country wake up Saturday morning and check the local listings for the college football games in their area they might do a double-take or rescan the television schedule just to make sure what they are seeing is, in fact, true.

Is Notre Dame really playing a game that is not being broadcast by a national network or major cable outlet? Will fans of the Fighting Irish really have to make a trek to a sports bar to find that elusive satellite station that is carrying their team's game against Air Force? The answers to both of those questions are yes.

For the first time since 1992, ABC, NBC, CBS or ESPN have declined to broadcast a Notre Dame game. It's been a long time coming for a program that is pampered by the media and has been given special treatment for years by television executives. By having the opportunity to play in front of a national television audience each week, the Fighting Irish have been handed an unfair recruiting advantage that they have somehow squandered for the past 15 years.

Since 1991, no other school has received the type of exposure Notre Dame has. That year, it signed a contract with NBC and the network was awarded the rights to broadcast all Fighting Irish home games. Soon after, viewers around the country began to be fed images of "Touchdown Jesus," the golden dome and the campus buildings on a weekly basis.

People were told about the majesty of Notre Dame and its storied football program. But then something funny started happening. Notre Dame began having some rather unremarkable seasons. The last time the Fighing Irish finished ranked higher than ninth in the Associated Press poll was 1994, which also happens to be the year of Notre Dame's most recent bowl victory. The mystique of the program has been further eroded as it has cycled through five coaches in the last decade (George O'Leary counts).

But despite wallowing in mediocrity for all of these years Notre Dame still has had all of its games carried by national networks. At least that was the case until this week, when CSTV — a small cable station that has 15 million subscribers— was handed the rights to the Air Force-Notre Dame game that is being played in Colorado Springs this Saturday.

For now, fans who hate Notre Dame can rejoice that its streak of national television appearances has finally been broken. But their happiness will be short-lived as the Fighting Irish will play Army on NBC the very next week and their nation of supporters will once again be able to watch its favorite team's games from the comfort of its own homes. And that is too bad.

Photo Source: Fansonly.com