The modern-day game

Notre Dame should take a lesson from the Yankees

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours.

Two of the most revered institutions in American sports, the New York Yankees and the University of Notre Dame football program, have been hard at work lately, trying to make sure their immediate futures measure up to their storied pasts. The Yanks figure to be more successful with their retooling process than the Fighting Irish, which would be in keeping with the trend of recent years. The Yankees have adapted to the way their game is played off the field far better than Notre Dame has, which is why the Irish are mired in mediocrity while ending a season one out short of another World Series title passes for a crisis around Yankee Stadium. Both teams may have a glorious history, but as for the present, it seems only the Bronx Bombers really know what time it is.

Having recently discovered what it feels like not to win a championship, the Yankees simply targeted the most desirable item on the free-agent shelf, slugger Jason Giambi, and pursued him with typical Yank relentlessness. (Give up, Jason, and sign the contract. Resistance is futile.) Notre Dame, conversely, fired head coach Bob Davie after a 5-6 season and replaced him with George O'Leary, giving them a coach whose name might be perfectly suited to South Bend, but will be greeted with a yawn nearly anywhere that high-school football studs are mass-produced.

The Irish, it seems, just don't get it. They don't get that it's not 1960, or even 1990, anymore. The Golden Dome, the classic uniforms, the Knute Rockne mystique, mean little to your basic blue-chip linebacker from Abilene. Mention The Gipper to an 18 year old and he'll probably think you're talking about a new hip-hop artist. Times have changed. Being a program with a national following, as Notre Dame has always considered itself, doesn't mean as much as it used to, because every school is on television these days. Thanks to cable and the satellite dish, East Carolina can have a national following.

To most of the potential recruits the Irish are chasing, tradition goes back only as far as your last bowl game, which is why Notre Dame needed a high-profile, charismatic type to be the school's next coach. Maybe O'Leary will wake up the echoes and return the program to greatness, but you can't say it's likely, not in this new world where the name Notre Dame doesn't necessarily send shivers up a teenager's spine.

Mystique and tradition mean even less in the cold, bottom-line world of professional sports, and despite all their monuments and retired numbers, the Yankees understand that better than anyone. It's true that owner George Steinbrenner has more money between the cushions of his couch than the Montreal Expos have in their entire budget, but that's not the only reason for the Yanks' success, or even the main one.

New York has taken advantage of the mentality of the modern-day ballplayer, the mindset that allows them to change loyalties as easily as they cash a check. It's amazing, for instance that players like Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina, once bitter division rivals of the Yanks, were able to slip so easily into pinstripes. It's even harder to believe that Giambi, mere weeks after a second heartbreaking playoff loss to the Yanks in two years, could turn around and consider sleeping with the enemy.

There was a time when that would have been unthinkable. When the Lakers and Celtics were dueling in the NBA Finals almost every year in the '60s, for instance, could L.A. guard Jerry West have brought himself to sign with Boston if he'd had the opportunity? Not unless he was at gunpoint. Would any of the old Brooklyn Dodgers have voluntarily jumped to the Yankees right after losing another World Series to them in the '50s? I think not. Yankee haters curse Steinbrenner's money and seeming ability to buy championships, but the real culprits are the players, the ones who, upon finding they can't beat the Yanks, are willing to join them.

The Yankees know that's the way the world works now and they take advantage of it. Notre Dame would be better off if it were as adaptable to the changes in modern-day sports. It's great to have a rich history, but not if it seduces you into living in the past.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

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