Why does Notre Dame keep starting every season on the road?

Yeah — what’s up with that?

The Notre Dame football team will kick things off this season on Sunday, August 31, inside Hard Rock Stadium against the Miami Hurricanes. Other than a COVID changed 2020 season, Notre Dame has started each college football season since 2019 on the road. The Irish are 4-1 in those games with wins over the Navy Midshipmen, Florida State Seminoles, Louisville Cardinals, and Texas A&M Aggies. The lone loss came against the Ohio State Buckeyes.

But why? As an independent and a blue-blood program, the Irish can pretty much set the schedule as they see fit. But why? Why lean into the trend of starting the college football season on the road?

Since I haven’t talked to Pete Bevacqua or Jack Swarbrick about this, I can only offer you the obvious reasons. Those reasons fly in the face of the conventional thinking and scheduling tactics for big-time college football programs. The typical CFB program likes to open things up at home for a couple of games with at least one — if not both — being of the “cupcake” variety. This way, they have a great chance to get off to a good start while ironing out many of the wrinkles.

Notre Dame has done this many times, but now it really looks like they would rather schedule a game away from South Bend to start the year. In 2027 and 2028, Notre Dame has the Purdue Boilermakers and Texas Longhorns as the first game of the season, respectively, but there also appears to be room for a game the week before. In 2029, game one is going to be the Alabama Crimson Tide inside Notre Dame Stadium.

I don’t think this is random. Notre Dame wants to start the CFB season on the road.

But why?

Camp prep time is a lot better than bye week prep time. There’s a common assumption that bye weeks are great for prepping for a big game. This narrative is actually more fable than fact. Having a healthy fall camp with nothing behind you allows for a lot of great prep for a big game — which these almost always are.

Getting a road game out of the way. One of the hardest things to do in college football is to play a game, go on the road to play another game, and then prep again for another game (home or away). Getting one of the travel games out of the way allows a more gentle effect on the team.

You get to be the big story. Notre Dame doesn’t really have this problem because they’re Notre Dame. The first game of the year brings Labor Day weekend — which is a HUGE weekend in college football. If you’re the team on Saturday night, Sunday night, or Monday night, the entire country is tuning in to watch the game.

Because they can. Again, one of the bigger perks of being THE independent program that athletic directors love to schedule is that the Irish can pretty much do whatever they like. The narrative of playing the first game on the road can be a huge flex.

Notre Dame is one of the few programs that can do all of this, so if you were wondering, why they have trended this way over the last half decade… there you go.