As a Notre Dame fan, I’ll say this......the reason that ratings are still high because Notre Dame haters are watching to see the Irish lose. It is almost like listening to Howard Stern and hear what is the next offensive thing he’s going to say.
A lot of middle-age football fans started hating Notre Dame thumbed its nose at the rest of college football when they signed their own deal with NBC years 30 or so years ago. Younger fans learned to hate them when more deserving schools were screwed out of BCS bowl games by weak ND teams.
Can you really blame them?