Notre Dame once again shuns easy wins for more favorable playoff path

With the new College Football Playoff format allowing more teams into the race for the National Title than ever, the strength of schedule has become an even bigger debate than it was a few years ago. That's especially interesting in regards to the Notre Dame football program. The Fighting Irish are often accused of having too easy a schedule to be considered a real national title contender. There was a time when that complaint was valid, but it's been quite a while since it was based in reality.

Indeed, the Irish schedule this season shows a team that will play plenty of Playoff contenders. The team has also gone out of its way to ensure tough opponents like Clemson are always on the schedule, even if old-time rivals like USC are dropping off.

While there's plenty of reason to believe that the Notre Dame football program is working as hard as it can to ensure that the strength of its schedule isn't an argument against it in the future, one more tidbit shows that the Blue and Gold have a tough schedule this season.

Only 10 teams didn’t schedule an FCS opponent in 2025 — Notre Dame is one

The Fighting Irish are just one of 10 FBS schools without an FCS program on their schedule in 2025. Notre Dame is one of only 10 teams out of 136 FBS programs.

Alongside the Irish are Stanford, Colorado, Tulane, Michigan, UCLA, USC, Wisconsin, Sam Houston State, and Texas. The most interesting name on this list is Sam Houston State, considering they came up from the FCS level a few years ago.

While the Conference USA program should probably think about padding its win total with at least one team from a lower level, the Notre Dame football program knows it needs to have established, well-known schools on its slate to make sure and get a bid to the playoffs when the season wraps up. Kudos to the administration for understanding the situation.