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Irish Insights

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    The Notre Dame men's basketball team is ranked 23rd in The Associated Press Top 25 and No. 25 in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches poll.
  • Irish women upset by West Virginia
    SOUTH BEND – Brooke Hampton made two free throws with 4.6 seconds remaining and West Virginia beat No. 2 Notre Dame 65-63 on Sunday, snapping Irish’s 21-game winning streak.
  • Notre Dame holds on to beat DePaul
    SOUTH BEND – Jerian Grant and Jack Cooley scored 22 points each and Notre Dame held off DePaul 84-76 on Saturday for its sixth win in a row.
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Bowl option

A non-BCS bowl game option for Notre Dame has moved to Orlando, Fla., and off of Jan. 1.

On Tuesday, the Big East announced it will begin an affiliation with the Champs Sports Bowl in 2010. With the Big East, comes an option of the Champs Sports Bowl to selected Notre Dame to play in the bowl game which will be held in late December

The Champs Sports Bowl would get the top Big East team not going to a BCS bowl game.

Notre Dame would need a 7-5 record and with in two wins of a Big East team to be taken by the Champs Sports Bowl. The Irish could be chosen over a Big East team with a 9-3 record.

Notre Dame will only be eligible to play in the Champs Sports Bowl once every four years. This is because the Big East's deal is with only one bowl, unlike in the past when the Big East had a hybrid deal with the Gator Bowl and the Sun Bowl and the Irish could be taken for either of those bowls twice in a four-year span.

The Champs Sports Bowl could be worth as high as $2.4 million dollars for the team selected, according to Steve Hogan, the chief executive of Florida Citrus Sports, which runs the bowl.

The Champs Sports Bowl currently matches teams from the Big Ten and ACC. Hogan said the Big East becoming half of the bowls matchup doesn't mean the Big Ten will be out of the bowl game, but he did say Florida Citrus Sports was evaluating its options with the ACC.

The Journal Gazette's Assistant Sports Editor Tony Krausz covers The University of Notre Dame. Krausz, a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and a native of St. Louis, has been assistant sports editor since October 2005. Prior to joining the JG, he worked at two papers in Mississippi covering high school and college athletics.