Why is there so much Notre Dame football on NBC?
You’ve broadcast every Fighting Irish home game since 1991, and the team hasn’t won a national championship since 1988. A: Notre Dame football has a national constituency. The premise of that deal was — and continues to be — that Notre Dame is the only national football institution in America. Notre Dame has performed extraordinarily well over the years. Like all great institutions in sports, it has a fan base larger than just sports fans. Notre Dame football transcends the traditional sports fan base: It attracts the casual fan as well. Q: NBC is taking a chance on Arena Football, which starts in February. Yet the XFL, a made-for-TV alternative football league, recently bombed on NBC. And many years ago, the USFL bombed. Why are you broadcasting Arena Football nationally? A: First, that’s not really true what you said about the USFL. It was making it. But it was derailed by several owners losing sight of the economics. In the case of the XFL, it just wasn’t executed well. But it did
