Notre Dame Football will deal with back-to-back unfavorable schedules

The Notre Dame football team will encounter increased degrees of difficulties in two different forms during both the 2019 and 2020 seasons.

As an independent, Notre Dame football often comes under scrutiny for what many perceive as being able to manipulate their schedule into an easy one. There are several metrics available to prove that’s not the case, but the belief exists regardless. Many college football fans feel like ducking a conference title game gives them an unfair advantage. The counter-argument is that the Irish can’t realistically afford to lose a single game if they still want to be contenders for a berth in the College Football Playoff.

During the 2019 and 2020 seasons, Notre Dame will play two different schedules with some built-in degrees of difficulties that go beyond simply the quality of opponents they play.

In 2019, the Irish will play seven games against opponents who will be coming off bye weeks. That’s seven teams who get two weeks to prepare for Notre Dame. On the flip side, one of Notre Dame’s two bye weeks come before New Mexico –a team they’d be favored to beat even with only one day of rest. The other bye comes before the Michigan game.

Notre Dame is favored against all seven of these opponents (New Mexico, Bowling Green, USC, Virginia Tech, Navy and Boston College) at the moment. That said, you can easily look at the group of teams and see a realistic chance of five of them pulling the upset over the Irish on the back of that extra week of preparation.

In 2020, Notre Dame’s degree of difficulty is increased by the logistics of the schedule. The Irish will only play six true home games. The rest will be on the road or at neutral sites. The opener will be in Ireland against Navy. They’ll then play back-to-back home games just twice the rest of the year.

There will be a four-week stretch in 2020 where Notre Dame will play consecutive games in Charlotte, NC (Wake Forest), Green Bay, WI (Wisconsin), South Bend (vs. Stanford) and Pittsburgh (vs. Pitt). All three of those road games will be in NFL stadiums.

To finish the 2020 season, the Irish will play Georgia Tech in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, return home to face Louisville, then travel to L.A. for the annual tilt with USC.

This is the nature of being an independent and a national brand. You’d like to think that these factors will be taken into consideration when calculating the strength of schedule of Notre Dame football.

Sadly, that won’t earn much pity from fans of other programs, but we already knew that. That’s life as someone with a vested interest in Notre Dame football.