It's not about the games, which have been some classics, for sure.
It's two-fold... one, as evidenced last year where we were about to get left out of the CFB in favor of Oklahoma despite our only loss being to #1 Clemson, Notre Dame basically has to run the table to get a sniff. So adding a tough game onto a slate that already features FSU/Stanford/USC/etc. isn't very pragmatic.
Two, and I have to be frank here, but the game isn't that much fun for many of our fans because your collective fan base is a bunch of assholes*. When we play one of our other rivals (see: USC, Stanford, etc.) you can attend the game without fearing for your safety. You can't do that in Ann Arbor,
because you guys are assholes. When we play a "neutral" prime time matchup @Oklahoma or @Clemson we get all the atmosphere... with classy but passionate fans. There aren't massive hypocrite writing "Hi Lizzy Seeberg" on a Game Day sign and pontificating afterwards how a "Michigan Man" would never stand for such a thing (ironically while your university tries to make Gibbons and Lewan go away as quietly as possible, and lie about the reason for Gibbons absence). They don't have their head coaches calling us "chicken" (lolHoke) for having to scramble with scheduling arrangements due to changing conference affiliation. They don't employ gaping dickholes like Dave Brandon, so it's possible to have an adult conversation with their leadership. Most other schools don't worship a KKK sympathizer who was such an anti-Catholic bigot it's truly sickening... yet you name buildings after him and pretend it didn't happen... it's almost as bad as PedoState fans trying to white wash Paterno.
So yeah... most of us would rather play someone like Texas or Georgia or Florida than rehash a tired series with a school that has has asshole, belligerent fans with the alpha asshole head coach at the helm.
*You honestly seem like a perfectly fine dude and pretty much every Michigan engineer I've ever worked with is a fine dude... I really don't know where your unwashed masses come from that throw bottles at visiting fans and such. But your fans on game day are literally the worst I've ever experienced in person and that includes Ohio State.
