2032 game will be in Lincoln on October 30 and 2033 in South Bend on Oct 29th.
Interesting that they picked late October dates.
I wonder if these games will actually get played or whether the contracts will end up being cancelled before then. And I wonder if they might turn out to be conference games instead.
- The current slate of TV contracts (Fox, NBC, et. al.) for the B1G and for Notre Dame (NBC) end with the 2029 season.
- Though Fox still controls the overall distribution rights for the B1G through 2036, they would still need to work with the conference to extend the various other partnerships through the end of that term.
- Notre Dame’s contract with the ACC goes through 2036. However, the resolution of Florida State’s fight with the ACC put in place a steady reduction in the amount of payments for a school to leave and take their rights with them. That amount bottoms out at $75M after the 2031 season. Technically, this does not affect Notre Dame’s contract with the conference, but it puts a pretty firm cap on what the liquidated damages might be if Notre Dame chooses not to honor the remainder of the existing contract, especially since the ACC is currently only distributing $17M per year to Notre Dame.
- One of the tweaks to the pending congressional bill to regulate College Football was to bump the proposed conference size limit from 18 teams to 19 teams, a necessary change before the B1G endorsed the bill.
All of this points to the turn of the decade as the next likely wave of conference realignment.
I think that Notre Dame’s future will also be heavily impacted by the outcome of the CFP format discussions this fall. ESPN is at the start of their current 30-day exclusive negotiating window with the schools before the schools have to declare their new format by December 1st. The amount of money available will have an impact on whether the CFP expands and how any additional slots will get divvied up. There are possible scenarios where Notre Dame might find itself frozen out without binding itself more formally to a conference.
Notre Dame also felt burned by the ACC taking a public position in favor of Miami jumping Notre Dame in the final CFP rankings last fall. They learned the power of the conference lobbyists when the CFP committee swapped the order of the two teams despite neither team playing in the intervening week. They might decide that it is best to have one of the big two conferences at their back when the next rankings controversy rolls around.
Any time I see these future opponents - I always think of the Tennessee series that was on the calendar for 20 years and eventually got cancelled. At one point, Scott Frost tried to weasel out of playing Oklahoma.
7 years is a long time in college football. Notre Dame could be in the big ten by then for all we know today. Both coaching staffs/ADs could be different by then as well. Contacts don’t mean much these days.
An LSU player is finding out contracts can’t just be unilaterally cancelled. He got served by Ole Miss at practice this week.
After some of the conference realignment and other last-minute cancellations, I’ve been told that the buyout clauses on contracts have jumped significantly, like adding another zero (from 500K to 5M)
I’ll be almost 80 when the first game is scheduled. Wonder if I’ll still be alive and kicking.
I’ll be 83, and hopefully still running the Husker List.
I went to both of the “recent” games - 2000 in South Bend and 2001 in Lincoln. I was 16/17. By 2032, my youngest will be the 17 and I’ll be 42!.
I will say - that 2000 game in south bend was a core memory for my younger self. Getting tickets was damn near impossible, but my Grandfather pulled some stings with an old work buddy. I got pulled out of school early on Friday and my dad drove us to the game. My dad got lost (this was long before GPS and still in the era of trip-ticks from AAA), and we didn’t arrive at our hotel until about 3AM.
Of course, we stayed at the “magnificent” Trump casino/hotel in Gary (barf), and that was by far the most depressing accommodations I’ve ever had. We got about 4 hours of sleep and then slogged through traffic to get to South Bend. We wandered around campus for 2 hours before the game and I don’t think I saw a single Notre Dame fan until 10 minutes before kickoff. The photos of the stadium from that day don’t do it justice - it was 90% Nebraska fans.
My favorite memory was Eric Crouch scoring the winning TD in overtime and having to explain the OT rules to the Notre dame fan sitting next to me (the poor guy thought they would get another possession for some reason). It took a couple minutes for this 16 year old kid to convince him the game was over.
“Those were the days…..”. I doubt I will have the same enthusiasm as I did back in 2000.
I’ll be almost 90. I’m 80 now. I Don’t think I’ll ringside for the games.