Desmond Howard Agrees That We Should Tell Notre Dame to Go Kick Rocks

Yesterday, i absolutely enraged Notre Dame Twitter by daring to suggest that the 2020 season should finally offer some bit of punishment to the Fighting Irish for their decades of petulance and refusal to be part of a conference.

This morning, Desmond Howard said he's on the same page and he doesn't mind the Golden Domers finally having something not go their way, either.

"If they're left out in the cold because of decisions that they made not to ever join a conference when they had the opportunity to join the ACC, then I think that's their problem and it's coming back to bite them in the butt," Howard said Friday on ESPN's "Get Up".

Finally, someone else out here willing to hold these people to task. I don't really get what's so difficult for Notre Dame fans to understand about this position. If you want to maintain your position that you can't be in a conference because you're a "national program" — this was only true when the Irish were the only team on national television; Notre Dame is no more a national program now than 20 other schools — then that's fine. But if a global pandemic comes rolling through and we can only play conference football games, you don't get to come running back to the ACC now.

And as much of a problem as I have with Notre Dame, I have a much bigger one with the ACC for letting ND walk all over it in the first place, and now to turn around and let the Irish play as a member of the ACC this season.

You're either in a conference or you're not. If you want the benefits of having your interests protected by a collective group of schools, you need to take the opportunity to join one of those groups. I'm sure any of them would be happy to have you.

But if you want to keep parading around telling everybody how great it is that you're "independent" because that's how it was when you were good in the 40s, you have to live with the consequences.