Notre Dame Football: Random And Dumb Schedule Generator

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish have one of the most diverse and unique football schedules each and every year. Fans spend a lot of time talking about the schedule each year- and rightfully so.

A case can be made that no sport is affected more by the game schedule than college football. Every year, we witness weak schedules turn into strong ones and vice versa. With Notre Dame, the schedule took a very strange turn once they signed their deal with the ACC that has the Irish playing five schools from that conference each year while placing the rest of its sports programs in the conference as full members.

That’s all fine and dandy, but with the new ticket prices for Notre Dame home games and everything, the microscope just got a whole lot stronger. Here is what we have this year:

For years, fans have come up with ideal new ways to schedule Notre Dame football games to promote a “better” set of games. They come up with real, actual ways to schedule these games year in and year out. I attempted the same- but used a much more exciting method.

Well, it’s not that exciting. More “dumb” than “exciting,” but I had a few drinks in me.

I put the names of every FBS division in a hat, and pulled out 10 names for a 12 game schedule. USC and Navy are now and forever shall be on the schedule- so why get unrealistic (you may chuckle now). In short, I then rolled a dice and corresponded that with a team from the division in alphabetic order. If a division had 7 teams, rolling a 1 meant that the teams that were first and last alphabetically had a roll off (one roll odd meant alphabetically first while even meant alphabetically last). The order picked is the order of the schedule.

There were a few more “rules” but after having typed this out now, it feels very stupid and silly- but I’ve crossed the point of no return, so we move forward...

Here is the new 2017 schedule for your jeering pleasure:

Logan Bowles-USA TODAY Sports

• September 2: Arkansas State Red Wolves
• September 9: Washington Huskies
• September 16: @ Oklahoma Sooners
• September 23: @ Miami-Florida Hurricanes
• September 30: South Florida Bulls
• October 7: @ Louisiana Tech Bulldogs
• October 21: USC Trojans
• October 28: UNLV Rebels
• November 4: Ohio State Buckeyes
• November 11: @ Buffalo Bulls
• November 18: Navy Midshipmen
• November 25: @ Florida Gators

HOLY MOSES! Notre Dame is all over the map here, and they play half of their games against non-power five schools. Seeing as we just got really weird here, let’s do the same thing- but with only power five schools:

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

• September 2: Oklahoma State Cowboys
• September 9: Arizona State Sun Devils
• September 16: @ Stanford Cardinal
• September 23: @ Miami-Florida Hurricanes
• September 30: Michigan State Spartans
• October 7: @ NC State Wolfpack
• October 21: USC Trojans
• October 28: Purdue Boilermakers
• November 4: Tennessee Volunteers
• November 11: @ Baylor Bears
• November 18: Navy Midshipmen
• November 25: @ Alabama Crimson Tide

Now that’s just plain crazy. Notre Dame opens up the season against the Mad Mullet and closes it out against Saint Saban. Thank the gods that Purdue is in there for a bit of a breather.

I know what you’re thinking... why? Well, because. I just had a dumb idea in my head that I couldn’t shake, so now you have this post that will haunt you for the rest of the day. Perhaps you want to talk about it? Seeing games like South Florida at home and going back to Raleigh has me trying to scratch the bugs off of my skin.

Now, back to our regular programming.