Notre Dame's 2018-19 Schedules: Dare To Be Great Or Overloaded?

If Notre Dame doesn’t make the four-team College Football Playoff in 2018 or 2019, it shouldn’t be because it plays only a 12-game slate or lacks in strength of schedule.

If anything, the degree of difficulty is what might help leave it on the outside.

The July 7 announcement that Notre Dame and Michigan will play two games in 2018-19 appears to evoke two sentiments among the Fighting Irish faithful.

The first is an upbeat approach about renewing a series that has been earmarked by numerous classic finishes between what currently are the 1-2 programs in the country in all-time winning percentage (with the Irish ahead by a marginal .73215 to .72987 in percentage points).

The flip side is the “Why are we doing this too ourselves?” attitude of overextending the schedule.

Both sides can be understandable.

The four-team Playoff format, entering its third year, mandates that for Notre Dame to be in the mix it must either finish 12-0 — it has finished unbeaten and untied in the regular season only three times in the 66 college football seasons since 1950 (1973, 1988 and 2012) — or as an Independent have a supreme strength of schedule at 11-1, although even that might not be enough.

That’s because popular perception for now is the Selection Committee will lean toward a Power 5 Conference champion, especially if it wins a league crown in a 13th game, over a one-loss Fighting Irish team. Even the 10-team Big XII will be the fifth and final Power 5 league to go to a conference championship showdown in 2017. This despite the Big XII’s Oklahoma team making it in at 11-1 last season without a league title game.

To compensate for that lack of a 13th contest — which could also become a detriment to making the Playoff for an unbeaten league team — Notre Dame vice president and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick believes the school's 12-game regular season needs to out-shine any 13-game slates the Power 5 might offer for the four available spots. To achieve that objective, the football team must confront, not avoid, the best possible competition it can schedule.

Here is how the 2018 schedule lines up, at least unofficially, with one more game still needed to fill out the docket:

Sept. 1 — Michigan

Sept. 8 — Ball State

Sept. 15 — TBA or Bye

Sept. 22 — Syracuse

Sept. 29 — Stanford

Oct. 6 — TBA or Bye

Oct. 13 — at Virginia Tech

Oct. 20 — Pitt

Oct. 27 — Navy (at San Diego)

Nov. 3 — at Northwestern

Nov. 10 — Florida State

Nov. 17 — at Wake Forest

Nov. 24 — at USC

To give you an idea of how difficult it is to go without a setback, consider that from 1994-2014, Notre Dame played Michigan and USC in the same season 17 times. Only once did it defeat both (2012) the same year.

Now, add in Stanford and a road game at Virginia Tech. For good measure, stir in a home contest with Florida State, which has risen again to become one of the nation’s top five programs under head coach Jimbo Fisher. Four of the last five games that season will be on the road, two of them in California, and the lone home game is FSU. Emerging 11-1 from all that would be a supreme achievement — and that’s exactly the point Swarbrick is trying to make to the Selection Committee.

The tentative 2019 slate seems even more treacherous, with one more game also needed to be added:

Sept. 2 — at Louisville (Labor Day)

Sept. 7 — Likely Bye because of Monday opener

Sept. 14 — New Mexico

Sept. 21 — at Georgia

Sept. 28 — Virginia

Oct. 5 — Bye or USC

Oct. 12 — Bye or USC

Oct. 19 — at Georgia Tech

Oct. 26 — at Michigan

Nov. 2 — Virginia Tech

Nov. 9 — at Duke

Nov. 16 — TBA or Bye

Nov. 23 — Boston College

Nov. 30 — at Stanford

Road games versus Louisville, Georgia and Michigan and Stanford — with the visit coming the week after playing at Georgia Tech, which might still be running the triple option with Paul Johnson if he is still the coach — almost scream for a 2-2 split.

And no matter how good you are, two losses will not get you into a four-team Playoff.

Now, we don’t know how good those foes will be three years from now or who will still be coaching them (will Bobby Petrino be at Louisville, or even Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, etc?), although the same goes for Notre Dame. Much can change over three or four seasons in college football (ask 2016 Irish foes Texas or USC).

We do know this, though: In 1990, Notre Dame's roster had four straight No. 1-ranked recruiting classes from 1987-90 and a Hall of Fame coach/motivator supreme leading them in Lou Holtz. It had exceptional wins that season by defeating co-Big Ten champs Michigan and Michigan State, vanquishing defending national champ Miami, and then toppling in two of the last three weeks SEC champ Tennessee in Knoxville and arch rival and three-time defending Pac-10 champ USC in Los Angeles.

Yet … the Irish still finished the regular season "only" 9-2 and outside the top 4.

A major reason why was a suicidal schedule that had a residual effect over the course of an 11-game season. The Irish were stunned by Stanford and Penn State — sandwiched in between the road contests versus Tennessee and USC — in home games. No matter how talented the roster or head coach were, going through a season unscathed is extremely difficult, and it is exacerbated when the schedule is described, in Holtz’s words, as “an average, ordinary death march.” Think of it this way: In Brian Kelly’s six years at Notre Dame (2010-15), not even Alabama’s Nick Saban, today’s version of Frank Leahy, has finished a regular season undefeated.

Notre Dame recruits well at a top-10-15 level, but not at the elite magnitude Alabama currently does, or the Irish did from 1987-90. Kelly is a proven, quality head coach, but not yet quite in the same category at this point as Holtz.

We’re well aware that “taking on all comers” is part of the Notre Dame fabric that elevated it to greatness. But even during the run to his first consensus national title in 1924, Knute Rockne began the nine-game regular season with Lombard and Wabash, and ended it with so-so Northwestern and Carnegie Tech.

To maintain its independent status in football, Swarbrick must build up the schedule to enhance the Playoff resume. On the other hand, it becomes a little more difficult to envision a Playoff bid when the operation has lost a minimum of three games 21 times in the last 22 seasons, with the schedule now maybe more daunting, at least on paper.

Notre Dame’s Catch-22 is it needs to upgrade the schedule for Playoff contention — yet the potential degree of difficulty is what might also keep it out of it.

That’s the chance that must be taken if one aspires and dares to be great.