One of the more fun tidbits of news from the last few days is that the North Dakota State Bison are moving from the FCS to the Mountain West Conference in the FBS.
After decades of being the most dominant team in the FCS, it makes perfect sense for NDSU to make this move, and the Mountain West (even the now watered down version of it) is the perfect home for Bison football.
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This now makes them a respectable G6 opponent available to schedule. Mountain West teams play an 8 game conference schedule, and have 4 open slots for out of conference matchups. While NDSU has 3-4 OOC opponents scheduled for the next few years, most of them are FCS games. They will likely start changing that a bit (FCS to FBS games) too over the coming months and years to line up with how most of the rest of the G6 handles business.
So… should Notre Dame make a move here? Should the Irish reach out to the Bison to schedule a game or two in the future?
Maybe.
I know it does make for kind of a sexy announcement because the Bison carry a good deal of respect, but personally, I think the Irish owe a couple of other programs a chance to not just play Notre Dame — but to be part of a home and home scheduling agreement.
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One of the worst things Jack Swarbrick did while the Athletic Director at Notre Dame was to help facilitate the move of Stanford and Cal to the ACC. It was Jack, as much as anyone, that pushed for this move — and it helped implode the Pac-12. When the dust settled, the Oregon State Beavers and the Washington State Cougars were left standing on an island with no other residents. It was pretty unfair considering how lame Stanford and Cal have been, while Wazzu and Oregon State have been pretty fun programs (especially those Friday nights in Pullman and Corvalis).
So yeah — before Pete Bevacqua picks up the phone to call Joe Bethersonton in Fargo, I think the Irish should dip their toes into the Pacific Northwest first.
It definitely doesn’t seem to matter to the committee if a team plays a schedule with a ratio of 8-4 P4 to G6 (like Ole Miss and their 4 OOC games that were all against G6 opponents) I do think it’s important for Notre Dame to try and stay around 10-2 in that regard. Notre Dame’s 2028 schedule, for example, currently has 10 opponents with (of course) Navy being one of the 10. To stay with the 10-2 model the Irish could schedule Oregon State and like Iowa or Houston or whichever P4 opponent has an itch to play ND.
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Should Notre Dame schedule NDSU? Sure — but there are still better options available.
