Last week it was announced that Notre Dame would be facing off against Arizona State in Dallas in the year 2013 (if the robot revolution hasn't occurred yet ). This is part of Dr. Kevin White's new scheduling plan, which includes fifteen home games, one road game (against either Southern Cal or Michigan) and one neutral site game. Last year it was announced that we'd be playing Washington State in San Antonio, a geography-numbing proposition we attributed to the athletic department's newfound need to just make money when the University has six billion dollars worth of endowment. It also led Rob to create this wonderful map , which I think best exemplifies how confusing the entire Alamo Dome affair is.

As far as the great scheduling debate goes, the one which has sprung up in regards to Rutgers, UConn and the 7-4-1 plan that has occupied Notre Dame fans in the dark period of the offseason, I have a few points I'm pretty adamant about. The first is that 7-4-1 is really dumb. I don't care if other universities are adding home games; if you want to add neutral site games against random opponents in random cities with no geographic coordination, you sacrifice a home game. Road games - despite the fact they're sometimes difficult to play in and don't result in a revenue bonanza for the good doctor - are an awesome part of college football. As great as it is to pump up the home crowd with a spectacular play, isn't almost as, if not more, satisfying to see 80,000 people in stunned silence, wondering what just happened? Some of my favorite college memories were the trips to State College and Atlanta, soaking in the atmosphere, rituals and customs that make autumn Saturdays distinct in those parts of the country.

As Rob said last year, when you're only playing four road games, it's pretty tough to lock into multiple home-and-homes that good teams demand (and deserve) to be a part of. If the sacrifice is that we lose a Saturday's worth of ticket sales and bookstore revenue, so be it. When the University starts struggling to stay in the black - which I'm pretty sure will not happen in my lifetime barring some sort of totally unforeseen circumstance - I'll acknowledge Dr. White's desire to get that cash.

When it was first stated that Notre Dame was going to be scheduling neutral site games in an attempt to further enhance their national reputation, I was thrilled. LSU in New Orleans, the Longhorns in Dallas and Urban Meyer in the Citrus Bowl were all sure to follow. Instead, Notre Dame is playing two games in Texas, yet none of those will be against Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU, Oklahoma or Oklahoma State. Unless there's some other factor I didn't find in reading about the latest Arizona State decision, the main deterrent from playing a school from the Big 12 region was the television deal. In Dr. White's perfect world, Notre Dame will play on NBC every Saturday, with the athletic department pocketing the majority of the windfall from that deal. If given the opportunity for a one-and-done, neutral site, split-revenue-and-ticket-sales game against the University of Notre Dame, you'd have a waiting list of schools interested and the ABC, ESPN and CBS all offering you primetime slots to play the game in. Instead of taking advantage of this, Dr. White is bastardizing the entire concept of barn storming.

Only an incredibly naive person would believe that college football isn't mostly about the money, but I think the Irish are taking this a step or two too far. The school could turn a really nice profit with any of these neutral site games, but a "nice profit" is too modest of a goal for a program that in no way needs that extra million. If Dr. White just wants to follow the trend of other programs scheduling more and more home games, then I think it would be nice if the NCAA would step in and curb the loading of schedules by eliminating the option of playing I-AA teams. Even though it's been proven those games aren't always gimmes, enough of them are it's embarrassing to have them around.

The entire scheduling debate could go on forever - and if you find the right messageboards, it seemingly has - but we can touch on that later in the offseason. Considering more exciting news came out this weekend when it was revealed by Outside the Lines that OJ Mayo had apparently accepted all kinds of illegal swag in his time at Southern Cal. When you toss that into all of the other allegations (and this recap doesn't even cover half of the problems that apparently haven't led to any sort of NCAA sanctions in Troy over the last few years), you'd have to think that either the media has it out for the Trojans, and is suitably blowing these stories out of proportion, or the NCAA just really sucks at investigating things.

ESPN's Pat Forde weighs in on the whole thing , highlighting some of the selective ignorance permeating through the Southern Cal athletic department:

But it gets better: The swag allegedly was financed by a man named Rodney Guillory, who previously had gotten former USC guard Jeff Trepagnier in trouble for accepting agent kickbacks. Not only did that fail to get Guillory banned from campus, he also wound up a fixture within the program. Of course, who wouldn't want a 43-year-old scammer hanging around a college freshman?

According to transcripts from OTL's interviews with Johnson, Guillory was sitting in the USC basketball offices when Mayo's signed letter-of-intent rolled off the fax machine. Johnson also said coach Tim Floyd talked frequently with Guillory about Mayo whenever "issues" arose.

In the wake of this, it's hilarious to listen to Floyd's interview on "Pardon The Interruption" before Mayo started his brief career at USC. In a previous episode, Michael Wilbon had arched an eyebrow about taking someone with Mayo's red flags into the program. Floyd's response made Mayo sound like a tragically misunderstood Eagle Scout.

According to Floyd, Mayo was raised by a single mother who didn't have the money to pay a big cell phone bill -- which ostensibly is why Guillory discouraged Floyd from calling him during his recruitment. Floyd also said the kid "doesn't have anything" materially.

Despite that, the USC coach apparently never got around to wondering how the poor child from Huntington, W.Va., could afford the expensive clothes on his back or the expensive shoes on his feet. How about the flat-screen TV in his dorm? That never set off an alarm? If the answer is that USC coaches or compliance workers never set foot in Mayo's dorm room … why the hell not?

When you recruit someone radioactive, you better have everything checked down to the smallest detail. Or else your program turns into Three Mile Island.

The entire debate about college athletes - especially the ones selling hundreds of extra season tickets for a program, like Mayo did for the Trojans this year - getting compensated is an issue I love to discuss. Anyone around big time college athletics knows that the student-athletes are not exactly devoid of special attention and favor on the campuses, but is that, and the scholarship, enough? Those Number 83 Notre Dame jerseys just didn't randomly become popular in 2005; Jeff Samardjiza had something to do with it. And Southern Cal basketball ticket sales didn't bump up just because they made the Sweet Sixteen the year before; the hype around OJ Mayo certainly made their athletic department some money. But as of now, said bonuses are illegal. The Mayo stuff - just like the Bush stuff and the Jarrett stuff - are just allegations, but all of these allegations are really starting to add up. Please check out Conquest Chronicles for the well-written Trojan side of this, here and here . Sample:

The system is so screwed up that it is clear the inmates are running the asylum. Frankly, I’m disgusted. Especially with the whole Bush mess hanging like a black cloud out there. You would think that SC would be more skeptical with all the things associated with Mayo and his recruitment of USC. I had my doubts about Mayo early on and how he came to SC but he won me over with his respectful demeanor and play on the court. I noted a month or so ago that having Mayo at SC was worth it, but if this is true I am totally bewildered. Mike Garrett is going to have to answer a lot of tough questions here as will Tim Floyd

Even if all of these allegations end up being false, Southern Cal looks dumb for not having Mayo monitored continuously, considering his past and the odds he'd be making a very quick leap to the NBA. It's not like nobody saw this coming . I mentioned being naive above, and I think that comes into play here. Nobody wants to know the dirty secrets that are going on in their favorite program, but when an incoming player has a target on him as large as Mayo did, you have to check up on him constantly. Even if he ends up being a perfect angel on campus, you have to show you were going beyond the call of duty to be vigilant about the situation.

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In Irish postseason action, both lacrosse teams were participating in first round action yesterday. The men's team, playing their first home game in program history, rallied from a two goal deficit with under five minutes to play to knock off Colgate in overtime. The Irish will now play Syracuse in the quarterfinals on Sunday at 3:00.

The women, after being tied with the three-time defending champion Northwestern Wildcats at fives, ended up falling 15-7 to the juggernaut from Evanston. No word on whether or not the number one seed in the postseason tournament celebrated wearing formal footwear or flip-flops .