UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

The first thing that stands out: three schools from the East and Midwest, none from the Southeast (though Texas, located in the Southwest, is now in the Southeastern Conference). It’s like 1976 came back from the dead. We’d become so accustomed to schools from the traditional SEC footprint (including the ACC’s Clemson and Florida State) dominating the sport that I’d genuinely come to believe by the mid-2010s that Ohio State was the only remaining northern school capable of winning a national championship.
But then Michigan did it last season. And now, a year later, either Penn State or Notre Dame will play for their first since the 1980s. The portal and NIL have been gradually negating the South’s geographic advantage in high school recruiting. Not to mention the SEC just wasn’t very good this year.
If only Brian Kelly had seen what was coming, he may never have gotten the chance to enjoy that delicious Texas Bowl rib.