2018 Schedule
Date Opponent
Sept. 1 Michigan
Sept. 8 Ball State
Sept. 15 Vanderbilt
Sept. 22 at Wake Forest
Sept. 29 Stanford
Oct. 6 at Virginia Tech
Oct. 13 Pittsburgh
Oct. 20 Bye
Oct. 27 Navy (San Diego)
Nov. 3 at Northwestern
Nov. 10 Florida State
Nov. 17 Syracuse
Nov. 24 at USC
3 home games to open. Ball State, although technically not 1-AA, is hardly a threat. I'm sure after playing the mighty Vanderbilt ND fans will be bragging about "We schedule games against the SEC."
4 games all year in a hostile stadium, one neutral site game against a service academy that will be starting a 5'10" quarterback, yeah its a real beast of a schedule.
Where is LSU? Auburn? Georgia? Clemson? They cherry pick opponents who have historical credentials like Michigan and USC but aren't playoff caliber programs. Zero of these teams are preseason top 10 opponents. They'll get killed by VT and USC anyway, lose to an unranked team in there, get cheap home wins against ranked Stanford and Michigan, win 9 games, get sucked off by everyone, ranked too high, and then lose their bowl game by 35 to the SEC's third best team.
Every ND season on repeat. Remix the schedule, same result forever.