Brian: On Wednesday, Notre Dame released their football schedules for the 2011 and 2012 seasons, giving Superfans two more dates to circle on the future football schedule:
November 19, 2011 -- at Notre Dame
November 10, 2012 -- Notre Dame
Next year's date with the Irish will be the latest BC has faced the Irish in the regular season since the 1999 31-29 thriller in South Bend, a BC victory that kept Notre Dame from bowl-eligibility that season. The only other time the Eagles have played the Irish later than November 19? The epic 1993 win over the No. 1 Irish.
Do you like this latest scheduling development with Notre Dame? Would you prefer to play the Irish in late November, say the week before a regular finale against Syracuse? Your thoughts?
Jeff: I like playing Notre Dame later in the season than we did this year. For example, if we were sitting at 2-4 right having not yet played Notre Dame yet, we could at least look forward to playing spoiler in Notre Dame's bid to become eligible for a BCS bowl or just beating our rival. Instead, with the team practically eliminated from ACC contention, there is not much to look forward to as a fan other than bowl pecking order which BC usually struggles with and falls as low as possible anyway. But come the end of November, hopefully in most future seasons, BC will be concerned with only winning the Atlantic Division come November so I do not want BC to end their season with two out of conference games. I think finishing with Syracuse is great but two is too much.
Brian: I don't think I would mind if the Eagles finished a regular season with two non-conference games, though it would probably be a little awkward and pretty much unprecedented. I can't think of another I-A program that has finishes with two non-conference games.
I do like having one non-conference game to end the regular season (i.e. Syracuse) and think most ACC teams should move to the non-conference, regular season finale model a la Florida State-Florida, Georgia Tech-Georgia and Clemson-South Carolina. I liked playing Maryland as the last ACC game of the year, so I would be in favor of a yearly November schedule that went Notre Dame, then Maryland, then Syracuse.
The best part of playing the Irish in November is a possible return of the Holy War hockey-football doubleheader, something Superfans didn't get to experience this year due to the BC-ND football game being scheduled before the hockey season started. The only sticking point there though is the home/away split. The hockey team has gone to South Bend in each of the last two seasons. A third straight season playing Irish hockey on the road seems a bit excessive, no?