It's a flexible kind of tradition

Notre Dame is Timbuktu -- a gathering place in the middle of nowhere, where people barter and exchange ideas. Except that at Notre Dame the goods aren't ivory and precious metal, but pretty wax wings and illusions about medium-grade celebrity quarterbacks.

Still, few dispute that the University of Notre Dame physically exists. It includes a collection of structures frequented by persons willing to provide atmosphere for a middling football program. There are buildings, and some persons enter and exit those buildings. Irrespective of how much a person hates Notre Dame (be it extreme hatred or a more epic kind) we all agree that, without question, the entity includes structures, as well as persons affiliated with those structures

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Notre Dame will face Washington State in San Antonio on Oct. 31, 2009. The game at the Alamodome will be the first of annual offsite games Notre Dame plans to play to try to make its contests more accessible to fans around the country.

A middling football program should travel cross-country to play another middling football program in the Republic of Texas. There is no football in Texas. Notre Dame students and alumni, who are used to attending home games on Notre Dame's campus, gladly give of themselves to show Texas the way.

"We believe these events will provide great opportunities for fans to see our team play when they may be otherwise challenged to travel or obtain tickets for games in South Bend," he said.

How true. As there is no football in Texas, the state's desperate citizens and its many, many Notre Dame fans look north to the green light and the orgiastic future. Besides, Notre Dame's students and alumni don't need to be actually present at "home" games. This game will be broadcast on NBC, and they see plenty of "home" games besides. It would be selfish of the football program to play all of its "home" games at its actual "university." The world is Notre Dame's home.

Of course, playing a "home" game in Texas may "otherwise challenge[]" the normal students, fans and alumni who expect to, like, go to their school's home games and shit. Fly to Texas on wax wings, maybe?

"Notre Dame has never played in San Antonio, so this will be a tremendous opportunity to showcase our program in a new city, and in a state in which we have a strong emphasis in recruiting," Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White said Friday.

Oh.

Looks like somebody buried the lede. A roadshow wherein a middling program plays another middling program at a location where neither has historical ties or a recognizable fan or alumni base might be a fine idea. It will be like a fake bowl game on Halloween -- and on a Sunday no less, so NBC can counterprogram the NFL. So it's pretty much like a bowl game and an NFL game in October, all rolled into one. It helps recruiting. So who needs "home" games at "home?" Maybe all Notre Dame "home" games should alternate between the Alamodome, the Meadowlands and the Citrus Bowl. Will help recruiting.

The program could play Texas, or Texas A&M, perhaps even SMU or Texas Tech, and gain exposure in Texas. If showcasing the program in a new city and giving this alleged legion of Notre Dame fans in Texas an opportunity to watch the game were an actual goal, Notre Dame could schedule a match against one of several high-quality Texas programs.

If the goal involves recruiting, an away game at Austin or College Station may very well be a bust. Far better to schedule another middling team on neutral ground.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Notre Dame will play football games at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., in 2011 and 2014.

A middling football program should travel cross-country to play another middling football program in the football-deprived state of Florida. There is no football in Florid-

It is an attempt to return the school to its independent roots.

The idea is to be independent of a conference, not independent of a campus or students.

Athletic director Kevin White has said the goal is to travel to different parts of the country and ensure that the school remains a nationwide program.

USC doesn't have a problem maintaining a nationwide program. It doesn't take its home games on the road to perform exhibitions in Chicago or Atlanta or Jefferson City, Missouri. Florida, Ohio State, Texas, LSU, Oklahoma and Michigan -- we're all doing just fine, as are Wisconsin, Penn State, Texas A&M, lowly Boise State and humble Hawaii, and none of these programs has an exclusive contract with a national television network. They subsist just fine.

White has compared playing "home" games at other sites to the barnstorming approach that Knute Rockne took while coaching the Irish in the 1920s.

In the 1920s, Notre Dame actually symbolized something. For example, a great man named Al Smith, then governor of New York, ran for President 1928. As the son of Irish Catholic immigrants, he was subject to the most vicious ethnic smear campaign in American political history. The cruelty of it ruined him as a person. In the 1920s, Notre Dame proved that even though the country despised Catholics, the Irish, and other immigrants, their boys could still pummel your ass on the football field. This was an important chapter in what college football meant in American social life.

It wasn't a cheap marketing ploy. Call it what it is -- cynical, commercial, self-interested or just fucking weird. But don't pretend that this football program respects tradition (its own, or the game's in general) when the team flies to San Antonio or Orlando on wax wings, in hopes of impressing four-star safeties and the NBC sports department.