Notre Dame Plays Holier Than Thou With Rutgers <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>For self-importance on the grandest of delusional scales, there is no entity in sports quite like Notre Dame football, winner of three games last season, routinely whacked like a piñata in recent bowl games and not a national championship to its name in 20 years, or since the Gipper was about to hand off the presidency of the United States to George H.W. Bush. How humble of Notre Dame to have visited Ronald Reagan in the Rose Garden at the White House on Jan. 18, 1989, resisting all temptation to call for a meeting at a neutral site more to its grandiose liking. As you may already know, the university is a member in good standing of the Big East Conference for athletic competitions it does not consider to be part of the religious experience. For the divine game, football, league opponents were long ago brainwashed to bow and accept the Notre Dame credo: Too sainted to play in your conference, too special to step into your house if it does not meet our dimensional specifications. That is, until Rutgers stood up last week, walked away from a proposed six-game series, refused to move its home games an hour north to the Meadowlands just for the privilege of playing in a stadium that would be half-filled with Notre Dame fans. This way to Piscataway, Rutgers said, or don’t bother coming to Jersey at all. Continued . . .</div>
