Pretty much this. Embarrassing for him, embarrassing for Jr. and Josh, embarrassing for ND, embarrassing for the network.
The speaker was George Atkinson
Jr., the 65 year old father of ND RB George Atkinson
III and ND DB Josh Atkinson.
I agree it was embarassing for himself and his sons. Parents sometimes do that.
I don't recall ND receiving any other invite besides the Pinstripe. There was talk of several bowls being interested but in all cases there were existing conference tie-ins and ND had to wait for a vacancy to open if the conferences didn't have enough qualifying teams.
There were also articles speculating about ND playing Boise State in the Pointsettia, Hawaii, or some other bowl. That matchup would have required the hosting bowl or ND to find other bowl slots for the teams they would displace. Twenty years ago before most all the bowls had conference tie-ins agreements that kind of wheeling and dealing was possible but not today.
Sound like George Jr reads some ND message boards. We've had people in the past weeks on IE whining about:
1. ND going to a cold weather bowl.
2. ND passing up prime recruiting states for NY.
3. ND stooping to playing a non-Tier One opponent.
4. ND should have stayed home and not embarrassed itself with such an "inferior" bowl.
So George Jr. isn't alone in being mis-informed.
As for compensating players there's been passionate discussion on that topic on IE for a couple of years. I suspect if he publicly voices an opinion on that topic again, he'll phrase his argument differently.
