One of the funniest news stories in recent days is that the North Dakota State Bison are moving from the FCS to the Mountain West Conference of 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 its now watered-down version) is the perfect home for Bison football.
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This now makes it a respectable G6 opponent available to schedule. Mountain West teams play an 8-game conference schedule and have 4 open slots for non-conference matchups. While NDSU has 3-4 OOC opponents scheduled for the next few years, most of them are FCS games. They’ll probably start to change this (FCS games to FBS) a bit as well over the coming months and years to come in line with how most of the rest of the G6 runs its business.
So… Should Our Lady intervene here? Should the Irish contact the Bison about scheduling a game or two in the future?
Maybe.
I know this makes for a pretty sexy announcement because the Bison command a lot of respect, but personally I think the Irish owe a few other programs a chance to not only play Notre Dame, but be part of a home scheduling deal.
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One of the worst things Jack Swarbrick did while he was athletic director at Notre Dame was help facilitate Stanford and Cal’s move to the ACC. It was Jack, as much as anyone, who pushed for this decision – and it helped implode the Pac-12. When the dust settled, the Oregon State Beavers and Washington State Cougars found themselves on an island with no other residents. It was pretty unfair considering how weak Stanford and Cal were, while Wazzu and Oregon State have been pretty fun programs (especially on 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 in the Pacific Northwest first.
It certainly doesn’t seem to matter to the committee if a team plays a schedule with an 8-4 P4 vs. G6 ratio (like Ole Miss and their 4 OOC games that were all against G6 opponents). I think it’s important for Notre Dame to try to stay around 10-2 in that regard. Notre Dame’s 2028 schedule, for example, currently has 10 opponents, with Navy (of course) being one of the 10. To stay with the 10-2 model, the Irish could schedule Oregon State and like Iowa or Houston or any other P4 opponent that feels like playing ND.
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Should Notre Dame schedule NDSU? Sure, but there are even better options available.
