Kirk Herbstreit calls out Notre Dame for soft schedule: ‘Incredibly unfair’
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Kirk Herbstreit took Notre Dame to task on Friday morning during the ESPN analyst’s appearance on Get Up, criticism the second-ranked Fighting Irish for not having a schedule that quite measured up to the other teams who are contending for the 2026 national championship.
Notre Dame doesn’t have USC on its schedule this year like usual, which is one glaring difference. There are other factors though, like ND’s season opener on a neutral field in Green Bay against Wisconsin being against an improved but unranked Badgers team.
A slew of other familiar Fighting Irish opponents this year, like Michigan State, Purdue, Stanford, Navy and Boston College, are all unranked teams as well.
In fact, as it stands right now, only 3 of Notre Dame’s 12 regular-season opponents are ranked: No. 3 Miami, which visits South Bend on Nov. 7 for what surely will be one of the most-anticipated games of the season; No. 24 SMU, which will visit Notre Dame 2 weeks after the Miami showdown; and the opponent which just happens to be on the Fighting Irish’s schedule this week, No. 8 BYU (5-0), which will host 6-0 Notre Dame on Saturday in primetime (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
Obviously, for Herbstreit, those 3 ranked matchups aren’t enough for his liking, and he said so on the day before Notre Dame’s first real huge matchup of the 2026 season.
“Notre Dame plays two games where they are going to be challenged. Think about what Alabama and Georgia and Ohio State and these teams and what they’re dealing with,” Herbstreit said. “That cannot continue. That’s an embarrassment and incredibly unfair. But this week they’re going to face a hostile environment.”
While Notre Dame has one of its few really tough games on tap for Saturday night, the Fighting Irish continue their pursuit of a College Football Playoff spot. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about Notre Dame’s odds to make the Playoff as well as the other top teams’ odds:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
