Does Notre Dame Have a Long-Term Scheduling Problem?
- Noah Wehby
- 17 hours ago
- 3 min read
Notre Dame's schedule has been a major point of conversation during this offseason. With USC off the schedule and the upcoming series with Texas now in jeopardy, is the new era of college football bad for Notre Dame's schedule?
Photo by The Irish Tribune
While Notre Dame has been able to flourish while keeping their independence, their ability to schedule marquee opponents seems to be in doubt due to the ever-evolving landscape of college football. The first casualty was the coveted Notre Dame-USC rivalry. A series that has spanned a century, and only ceased previously due to a world war and a global pandemic. But after USC jumped ship to the BIG 10, neither side has been able to find common ground to continue the series. Now, both fanbases will claim it was the other school that decided to back out of the game, but either way, it hurts not only Notre Dame but college football as a whole. Just recently, it appeared that the upcoming series with Texas could also be in jeopardy as Texas' AD Chris Del Conte told On3's Brett McMurphy that the series was "tentatively" scheduled.
The 12-team playoff format has created a burden for many teams to curate a schedule that gives them the best chance to make the playoff field. To do that, it is almost a forgone conclusion that a team must get to at least 10 wins. This makes teams much more hesitant to schedule tough out-of-conference games if their conference schedule is already difficult. In USC's case, their conference schedule comprises Oregon, Penn State, Indiana, and Ohio State. With this slate in the BIG 10, USC likely decided it cannot afford to add one more difficult game to the schedule. Notre Dame fans will argue that USC's line of thinking is "soft" or "bad for college football", but it is a growing ideology throughout the sport as programs try to strike the perfect balance to create schedules that are strong enough to make the playoffs while winning enough games.
Second, the overall changes to conferences and how they schedule have also threatened Notre Dame's future matchups. Conference realignment has consolidated a lot of the sport's best programs into two or three conferences. With Notre Dame's choice to stay independent through all of this, it has left them in a spot where they are sometimes the odd man out when it comes to scheduling. To add to this, the ACC agreement has limited the freedom Notre Dame has to schedule whoever it would like. If the ACC were up to par with the SEC and BIG 10 in terms of the strength and parity amongst its members, this would not be a problem, but the ACC has struggled to keep up with other conferences when it comes to overall talent. The second part of this is the SEC moving from an eight-game to a nine-game conference schedule in 2026. For Notre Dame, that means there is one less week in the season to schedule a game with an SEC team in the future. With the BIG 10 already playing a nine-game conference schedule, it worsens the chances of getting a premier game locked in for the future. This is likely the reason Texas is seemingly pouring cold water on the idea that the series scheduled between the two schools will happen.
With the news that the Texas series might be up in the air, Texas Tech's Head Coach Joey McGuire expressed his desire to replace Texas if they decide to drop out of the home-and-home series. With BYU replacing USC, Notre Dame may have an ally in the Big-12, as they are constantly looking to beef up their schedule to compete with the SEC and BIG 10. While nothing is certain, especially as college football seems to change on a daily basis, it will be critical that Notre Dame stays in front of these changes to continue to give Marcus Freeman and his talented teams the best chance to win a National Championship.
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