of the Irish joining the conference as full members (late 90s). One of the topics that popped up in the media coverage is that Big Ten schools either were open to or had already conducted research that violated/contradicted with Notre Dame's religious beliefs. They might have been referring to stem cell research or whatever the research topic was hot/controversial at the time. I don't think the Big Ten was requiring Notre Dame to participate in it.

However, the impression I got was that Notre Dame was uneasy about joining a conference that was willing to do something that went against its religious beliefs. Then again I am basing it on the media (specifically ESPN) was presenting the segments on SportCenter. For some reason Bob Holtzman's name keeps popping into my head as the reporter who did those segments.