is because of the very few games that could actually be covered from the early days on into the 70's on TV/Radio.

ND was chosen not because of independence, there were many of those in that time period, but because of the Catholic connection - there were lots of Catholics in the NE and midwest that didn't have a team or alma mater - ND games were broadcast because of this built-in fan base connection that helped ratings - not because of anything special. Being broadcast that much caused the best players to want to go there, the snowball effect made ND become very good.

Exactly why I followed professional football in those days - you could keep up with who was on which team (which is now getting hard to do even in college) and I had no connection whatsoever to ND - and that was the weekly broadcast game.

Now days every Baptist Bubba in Bama has a large screen TV and has practically every college game played right at his fingertips. A larger percentage of the population has an alma mater that they can follow, wherever they live. Major conferences span from East coast states to Texas, minor conferences span the country (versus a conference only having teams from 3-5 states) - playing a "national schedule" of teams from across the nation isn't unique to ND - they just play teams from different arbitrary groups.

Identifiable attributes aren't always complimentary.