Famed former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz believes the Fighting Irish must retain their independence and not join any conference as has been proposed.

"I don't think they're looking at it right now,'' Holtz said. "I don't see where much has changed from a year ago. ... As it is now, Notre Dame is a national school and should remain one.

Lou Holtz sees only one scenario where Notre Dame should join a conference, if the schools join together to create mega 16 team conference groups.

"If that happened, they might have to look at their options,'' Holtz told the St.Louis Post-Dispatch. "The landscape would have changed tremendously. I never said Notre Dame should join a conference. But if that were to happen, they'd have to re-examine.''

Holtz says a problem would develop even in a sixteen team conference.

"How do (the Irish) find a schedule they can compete by?'' he asked. "If you end up with five or six major conferences, no one is going to want to play them in the middle of the season when they're fighting for a conference championship.''

"It used to be that conferences had things in common,'' he said. "They shared things academically and were in the same region. You could have schedules and didn't have to travel all over the world. Now I'm just glad the conferences are confined to this country.''