Notre Dame Football: Irish Will Play Vanderbilt at Home in 2018

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Vanderbilt Commodores will play for the third time in their history - and first since 1996 - when the SEC school comes to South Bend on Sept. 15, 2018.

The university also announced it will play 7:30 p.m. home games against the Georgia Bulldogs (Sept. 9) and the USC Trojans (Oct. 21) this fall. The Sept. 30 game against Miami-Ohio Redhawks will be a 5 p.m. start and be televised on NBC Sports Network, which previously carried the Shamrock Series game against the Boston College Eagles in 2015.

The university announced its 2018 and 2019 schedules, with these before unknown updates:

• The Irish’s Nov. 17, 2018 game at the Wake Forest Demon Deacons has been moved to Sept. 22, 2018 and the home game against the Syracuse Orange moves from that date to the November date.
• The Irish’s games at the Virginia Tech Hokies and home against the Pittsburgh Panthers have been moved up one week. Notre Dame will play in Blacksburg on Oct. 6 - not Oct. 13 as previously announced and host the Panthers on Oct. 13, not Oct. 20. The Oct. 20 weekend is now a bye. (Here’s the 2014 ACC release to compare.)

• The Sept. 7, 2019 weekend is now officially a bye.
• Notre Dame will play the USC Trojans on Oct. 12, 2019 and have a bye on Oct. 19, 2019. (The Oct. 19 game at Georgia Tech was already moved to Nov. 14, 2020.)
• As expected, Notre Dame has not scheduled its game with the BYU Cougars in Provo. They have until 2020 to do so, or offer a buyout. Tom Holmoe, BYU’s atheletic director said Wednesday: “This is something that Notre Dame eventually will have to decide how they want to do that. Right now, as I talk to people, some people are frustrated that nothing is happening. But to me, I’m going to say somewhere down the road if they come and play in Provo, that would be a good thing because they owe us a game in Provo. Or, if they don’t want to play, we get a good payday. So both of those things are good things. I’m not going to worry about it right now.”

Here is a link to the official release, which also says that: “One home game in either 2018 or 2019 may be relocated to an off-campus site as part of Notre Dame's Shamrock Series scheduling initiative.”