Um... Okay?

Bill Martin goes to golf with members of the '97 national championship team. While there he is quizzed on the future of the Notre Dame series. He says this:

If Michigan athletic director Bill Martin had his druthers, Ohio State and Notre Dame would not play at Michigan Stadium in the same season.

But it appears Notre Dame is unable to accommodate a move like that for similar reasons of its own.

"They don't want to have at home the same year Southern Cal and Michigan, because those are their two premier games," Martin said. "If they moved to accommodate us, then they're stuck with Southern Cal and Michigan at home the same year, so I'm not sure how it's going to get resolved. That's a challenge."

The Michigan-Notre Dame series goes through the 2011 season. Martin said he has been talking about a series renewal with Irish athletic department officials for the last three or four years.

"We've been talking about taking off an odd number of years so we can accomplish that (schedule maneuvering), but then that doesn't do what they want," Martin said.

It does not appear there has been any talk of dropping the series.

"It's the highest-rated television preseason game in college football," Martin said. "Those are the two winningest programs in college football history. It's the game that all of our fans want and all of the Notre Dame fans want. It's hard to drop that series. They don't want to drop it, I don't want to drop it; I want to simply fine-tune it a little bit."

In this passage Martin has

• praised the game,
• specifically denied any desire to drop the series,
• stated he's been working on an extension for years, and
• expressed a reasonable concern about the ND/OSU rotation.

BGS seizes upon this to argue that this is evidence that... Michigan would like to stop playing Notre Dame! Okay, that's a bit odd, but since Martin didn't come right out and say "you'll pry the Michigan-ND series from my cold dead hands," if you are in a certain untrustworthy frame of mind you could potentially see in this the seeds for the dissolution of the series. As Martin's desire to spread Michigan's two marquee games out so season ticket holders don't get stuck with a home slate like last year's -- Wisconsin and, uh, Iowa? -- is expressly built on the idea that Notre Dame is an anchor in the schedule, it's obviously paranoid and unlikely, but it's not entirely impossible that this is the ultimate nonsensical weasel move. Stipulated. (Also stipulated: it is the height of irony to take this conversation, spin it into something unflattering about the University of Michigan, and then title your post "You know how I know you're Michigan?" Someone get me a textbook so I can insert this sequence into it.)

But the really fun part comes in the comments, where people take up the paranoid and unlikely speculation built upon the Michigan athletic director's direct statement that he wants to continue the Notre Dame series and go to town. (To be fair: there were quite a few reasonable commenters in the BGS thread, but it really was split 50-50 between "f-em! we're Notre Dame" and sanity; just about everyone took the assertion that Michigan was looking to end the series at face value.) At first there's just sad acceptance of the inevitable end of the series:

It's a shame that it's probably going to end. To me, that game is the true start of the CFB season. Maybe there's a little fear that with the resurgence in recruiting in South Bend, that their season will be bookended(?) by losses.....

...says the team that last won a bowl game in the Hayes administration. And then there's the guy who blacked out for a convenient three-hour period last year:

If Monk Davieham was still in charge, Michigan would be pushing like hell for a long term extension. The skunks know that once we truly turn the corner on this rebuild, their ass is grass and Charlie's a big 'ol lawn mower.

And the rank hypocrisy:

The real reason the Skunks are maneuvering and trying to justify dropping the IRISH is because next year they have already scheduled Toledo, as in Holy Toledo!! Gee the Winningest football program can surely keep on winning when it reaches across the state line to start playing Holy Toledo. The Holy part is to justify dropping the IRISH, if that ever happens.

Insert "Commander-in-Chief" reference here. And then there's this:

Voice has it right. Screw them if they think getting off our schedule will make them better - perhaps it will, until the SOS rankings and opinion of B10 football goes in the tank.

Not playing Notre Dame will destroy the Big Ten. Destroy!

And then, the favorite:

Fuck Michigan.

Aren't they pulling a tOSU and trying to limit their away games to 3 or 4 away games per season?

It was no different when Fielding Yost was there. Michigan has always been afraid of a schedule that might challenge them.

What a bunch of sissy boys.

Waa, don't want 2 challenging games in one season Waa.

Fuck Michigan.

Lets add Nebraska, Texas and OU into a rotation.

Michigan and their conference suck.

...all because Bill Martin said "I very much want to continue the Notre Dame series." Verily, all this illuminates the dodgy character of Michigan fans. Yea, we are caught in its chemical-green florescent glow, each hair-ridden mole and dusky, craterous pore magnified for the world to see. Lo. We are undone.

I dunno, Bill, maybe next time just say "no comment"?