Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly joined ESPN’s “Get Up” radio show Mike Greenberg on Wednesday and spoke on a variety of topics surrounding the uncertainty of college football right now. One uncertainty Kelly gave some clarity about is Notre Dame’s 2020 schedule after losing three games. Kelly made it clear that if there is a season, the Irish will have no trouble completing their schedule.
“Our phone is ringing right now in terms of teams looking for games,” Kelly told Greenie. “That is probably the least of our concerns at the moment. There are many games to play. We’d just like to play around a bit. “
Notre Dame lost games to Wisconsin at Lambeau Field and contests with traditional rivals USC and Stanford last week when Big 10 and Pac 12 decided to move on to a conference-only schedule. As of today, those two remain the only five powerful conferences to make a switch to just conferences via ACC, SEC, and Big 12, they are expected to make similar moves soon.
As we all know, Notre Dame has a unique relationship with the ACC, given its soccer independence. “We have had a collateral relationship in soccer with the ACC; All of our other sports are in the ACC, so that relationship has been a 6 game schedule. So we have six, “Kelly explained to Greenberg before making it also clear that ACC is working with Notre Dame to potentially meet its agenda. (Full audio of interview available here)
“Jack (Swarbrick) has certainly contacted (ACC) Commissioner (John) Swofford about adding games to our schedule,” Kelly said. “I think those are ongoing negotiations. We are confident that ACC will seek to augment those games for us and, as you know, there is a large inventory of games available. “
Wisconsin, USC, and Stanford represented three of Notre Dame’s biggest games in 2020, but with the inventory available, the ACC and the Irish could create some compelling clashes, assuming there is even one season, but let’s keep pretending there will be for now. Replace those three with, say, Florida State, Miami, and Boston College, and you’ll have three games against some name-brand teams Notre Dame has some history with. Miami has even publicly said this week that they are interested in helping to complete the Notre Dame timeline. It’s not ideal, obviously, but nothing is ideal right now.
Of course, there are still many hurdles to overcome before the schedule needs to be replaced. Every day things are looking bleaker and darker for there to be a season as cases across the country continue to rise as states continue to roll back their reopens. There is still some time between now and when a season begins, but the clock is ticking. However, Kelly expressed optimism that they would play soccer this fall yesterday as well. He just wasn’t sure when that season could be played.
