SI

Notre Dame’s Self-Important Power Play Is Downright Comical

Sports fans and ESPN will be just fine without the Fighting Irish in the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

Jimmy Traina

Notre Dame’s season is over after it decided to skip playing in a bowl game.
Notre Dame’s season is over after it decided to skip playing in a bowl game. / Michael Caterina-Imagn Images
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1. Are you guys O.K.? How are you all holding up? Have you been able to move forward despite the devastating news?

I have to assume anyone reading this column right now is a sports fan, so I’m concerned for your well being after being dealt the devastating blow that Notre Dame refused to play in the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

I already had zero sympathy for Notre Dame not making the playoff, but for the Fighting Irish to act like skipping the Pop-Tarts Bowl is some sort of diabolical revenge tactic against ESPN that will cripple the Worldwide Leader is quite a display of self-absorption, even for them.

Memo to the Irish: Nobody outside of your fan base cares if you don’t play in the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

Regarding the playoff, Notre Dame’s schedule is a total cupcake. It played two very good teams, Miami and Texas A&M, and lost to both. Its best win was against USC at home. Big deal. The rest of Notre Dame’s season is playing garbage like Purdue, Syracuse, Stanford, Boston College and Arkansas. These were Notre Dame’s road games this season: at Miami, at Arkansas, at Boston College, at Pitt, at Stanford. But I’m supposed to get worked up because it didn’t make the playoff?

What exactly do the Fighting Irish deserve credit for?

The school’s AD, Pete Bevacqua, tried to make a case for the Irish on the Dan Patrick Show Monday, while conveniently leaving out the fact that Notre Dame’s schedule was a joke over its final 10 games.

If you want to make sure there isn’t a chance you get snubbed from the playoff, stop being so high and mighty and get in a conference and play in a conference title game.

Notre Dame isn’t nearly as important in the college football world as it thinks it is. Just look at the ratings for its games on NBC compared to those of ESPN and Fox.

But this isn’t about the playoff. This is about Notre Dame’s hilarious “power” move of skipping the Pop-Tarts Bowl to damage ESPN and its pathetic whining.

The school thinks sports fans across the country are going to be devastated that they won’t be able to watch the Irish play on Dec. 27 at 3:30 p.m. Guess what? We’ll survive.

Last year’s Pop-Tarts Bowl, featuring Iowa State against Miami, drew 6.8 million viewers. The rating will be up this year no matter who plays in the game because Nielsen has a new method for counting viewers. ESPN will be just fine without the Irish in the game.

I saw a headline on a story that said, “Notre Dame Got Milked By ESPN For Drama; So Why Should It Help Disney Generate Ratings For The Pop-Tarts Bowl?”

I can assure you that Disney will feel absolutely zero effects of Notre Dame not playing in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. But let’s say you want to believe the Pop-Tarts Bowl will suffer major ratings damage without the Irish? How much money do you think ESPN would actually lose on the game? ESPN’s global revenue last year was $3.49 billion. I’ll go out on a limb and say the network will survive just fine no matter what the rating is for the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

2. Justin Herbert did absolutely nothing wrong here. He told ESPN’s Laura Rutledge that he wanted to celebrate with his team, yet he stood there and did the interview and answered multiple questions. No harm, no foul.

3. Not surprisingly, last Thursday’s Cowboys-Lions game became the most watched regular season game aired by Prime Video with 19.39 viewers tuning in.

4. The NFL announced on Monday that it was flexing the Bengals-Dolphins game out of Sunday Night Football in Week 16 and putting Patriots-Ravens in its slot on NBC.

Two things about this: 1) I taped this week’s SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Monday with Ian Eagle and J.J. Watt. I told Watt the league would not make this flex, so you can hear me embarrass myself regarding this when the pod comes out Thursday; and 2) The next flex the NFL needs to make is in Week 17. Get the Rams and Falcons off Monday Night Football and put the Texans-Chargers game in that slot.

5. ESPN got lucky Monday night when its NFL pregame show was live on the air as news broke that 44-year-old Philip Rivers was getting a tryout with the Colts. The reactions from the NFL Monday Countdown crew were about what you’d expect.

6. The latest episode of SI Media With Jimmy Traina features an interview with College GameDay host Rece Davis.

Davis reminisces about being at ESPN for 30 years, his early days on ESPN2 and his time as a SportsCenter anchor.

In addition, Davis, who has now been the host of GameDay for 10 years, talks about what it was like to replace Chris Fowler, his favorite Lee Corso memory, whether he cares about GameDay ratings, why he stayed at ESPN instead of leaving for Fox, whether he thinks he can challenge his co-hosts and the most difficult thing about hosting GameDay.

Other topics discussed with Davis include the claim that ESPN has an SEC bias, calling Bill Belichick’s first game at North Carolina and the aftermath, the Lane Kiffin saga and how he’d fix the college football playoff.

Following Davis, Sal Licata from WFAN and SNY joins me for our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week, Sal gives an update on his WFAN status, we talk about our Thanksgivings, look ahead to a monster NFL week, react to Spotify’s list of the top 10 podcasts of 2025 and discuss some content creators.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on YouTube.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Will Arnett is the guest on Conan O’Brien’s latest podcast episode. This clip from the show is a must-watch.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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