If Notre Dame wants to play a true home-and-home with Indiana, they need to join a conference.
Those are the terms outlined by IU football coach Curt Cignetti Friday in an interview with the Big Ten Network.
“I’d like to play Notre Dame,” Cignetti said on the Big Ten Network. “They ought to come to our place twice, and we’ll go there once, since they’re not in a conference.”
Cignetti’s comments come after a previously scheduled Indiana and Notre Dame home-and-home in 2030 and 2031 was canceled.
Multiple national outlets reported Indiana canceled the planned games, but the particulars aren’t clear. Around the same time the news broke, Notre Dame announced a renewal of their USC series on at last one of the same dates the IU games were scheduled.
Is there any logic to Cignetti necessitating two games in Bloomington for every game in South Bend?
He seems to want the Irish to have to play a more challenging schedule.
Because Notre Dame is an independent, it sets a large part of its own schedule. They play six games against ACC teams but control the remainder of their slate. And the ACC hasn’t been a murderer’s row of late.
The Irish are annual competitor for precious College Football Playoff spots, and recently they have opted to play a relatively soft schedule that enhances their odds to reach the CFP. Their preseason strength of schedule ranked No. 62 in ESPN’s SP+, the second-lowest of any team in the SP+ top-25.
Meanwhile Big Ten teams play nine conference games, and every team in the league has a more difficult overall strength of schedule than Notre Dame according to SP+. Whether you agree with it or not, Cignetti’s premise appears to be — step up to the plate and operate on the same terms as everyone else, Notre Dame.
Ultimately, Cignetti believes the scheduling banter that has dominated the preseason conversation is much ado about nothing. He sees schedule standardization coming sooner than later.
“I’m confident the schedule will change in the next few years across college football,” he told BTN.
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