With Notre Dame’s football alliance set to start with the ACC in 2014, one of the first big pieces of scheduling news broke today. Rivals’ affiliate Warchant.com reports that Florida State will host the Irish in ’14.
Consider this the first of hopefully many announcements for athletic director Jack Swarbrick and ACC commissioner John Swofford, as they’ll be aligning the rest of the Irish sports into conference play starting next school year.
This from Warchant.com:Notre Dame and Arizona State reportedly cancelled a game scheduled for 2014 last week, a move that aids Notre Dame’s ACC football obligation. Adding FSU gives Notre Dame three ACC opponents in 2014 (Syracuse, Pitt, FSU) to date.
A date for the FSU-ND game could not be confirmed, but one source told Warchant.com that FSU and the ACC are clearing the deck to play the game early in the season. The plan is to move up FSU’s game with The Citadel - currently scheduled for Sept. 13 - to Sept. 6, the week following the season opener with Oklahoma State. Spacing out the marquee out of conference games sets up the potential to play the FSU-Notre Dame game in September. An early season matchup between traditional powers is also logical for the league as an impact game in Year 1 of Notre Dame’s ACC membership.
When looked at logically, the news that the Irish will play Florida State isn’t all that surprising, considering the Irish need to get to five ACC games starting in the ’14 season. While it may be a departure for a Seminoles squad that usually schedules patsies until conference play, this revival of a once fierce rivalry will be great for both program’s fanbases, especially if it’s an early season match-up.
Don’t expect to hear much from Notre Dame or Swarbrick on upcoming schedules until their are completed. While the news that the Irish dropped their trip to Tempe might be true, we won’t likely know anything official until the rest of the scheduling cards have been dealt.
As of now, the ’14 season is rather intriguing. We can lock games against Pitt, Syracuse and Florida State in as three ACC games (with two potentially to go), and a match-up against Temple is confirmed for Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. A home game is on the books against Northwestern, as well as the final installment of the Michigan series. With annual dates against Navy, Stanford and a season finale at USC, you start to see some of the inflexibility start to rear its heads, especially considering games with Rice, Purdue and BYU have also been rumored.