A look at Notre Dame’s football scheduling habits as indicative of the path of the university

 

In an interview on December 20, 2013, as Notre Dame was announcing new football schedules, new conference partnerships, and new apparel, Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick provided an interesting rationale for Notre Dame’s schedule.  Swarbrick expressed a desire to play peer institutions.  This begs the question of what the university considers to be a peer institution, and, in turn, what kind of institution Notre Dame wants to become?  The scheduling tells an interesting tale.

Over the course of the last several months, Notre Dame has announced several changes to its scheduling in the next several years.  Perhaps the most well-known is the decision to drop the University of Michigan from the football schedule.  The Wolverines have since been replaced by the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Georgia Bulldogs, the Texas A&M Aggies, and every school in the Atlantic Coast Conference.  Notre Dame is also icing its long time rivalries with Michigan State and Purdue University in favor of one to two game home and home series with breaks in between.

According to Swarbrick’s logic, then,  OSU, UGA, A&M, and the ACC fulfill the ideal of a “peer” institution, and tell us by extension what Notre Dame thinks of itself.  Ohio State, Georgia, and Texas A&M are known as large, state-funded research institutions that accrue honors by attrition.  The sheer size of the student bodies at these schools statistically guarantees a certain number of Rhodes, Truman, and Fulbright scholars.  Is this the vision that the administration has for Our Lady’s university?

To be sure, there are still plenty of traditional opponents on Notre Dame’s schedule, with USC, Stanford, and Navy making yearly appearances.  Pittsburgh, Boston College, Miami, Florida State, and Georgia Tech will only make semi-annual appearances through the revolving door of the five-ACC-games-a-year schedule.  Notre Dame has also slipped in a few games against schools such as Rice, Duke, Virginia, North Carolina, and Syracuse.  These schools stand in sharp contrast to the behemoths of the preceding paragraph.

These latter five are all institutions known for a dedication to cultivating an academic reputation, often at the extent of being successful at athletics.  They are also all (with the exception of Rice) members of the ACC, Notre Dame’s new home for most of its non-football sports.

It seems, at least from the scheduling, that there is a certain amount of tension regarding Notre Dame’s peers.  On one hand there are the research institutions which also have a reputation for athletic success and wild student bodies.  On the other hand, there are the more academic schools with smaller student bodies which every now and again emerge from their stupor to shock and stun the athletic world before sinking back into oblivion.

What, then, is the goal of the administration?  Is it to build a “bigger and better” Notre Dame, as Fr. Jenkins said in his inaugural address, with a bigger student body and with better grant awards?  Or is it a Notre Dame that uses its size and its endowment to attract students who are seeking a purely academic experience?  Perhaps it is a combination of the two, as the hulking Campus Crossroads project seems to imply.

John McMackin is a junior studying history and theology.  He personally wishes Notre Dame had joined the new Big East Conference, but definitely stayed independent in football.  Contact him at jmcmack1@nd.edu.