Notre Dame’s home kickoff times announced
Notre Dame has just released its home game kickoff schedule.
In a shock to nobody, the Texas A&M and USC games will both be primetime affairs, getting the royal NBC treatment. The “peacock” game will be against NC State with a 3:30 ET kick time. Purdue, Boise State, and Syracuse will all be traditional afternoon kickoffs on NBC.
The big surprise? The yearly battle with Navy on November 8th will also be a primetime 7:30 ET kick time. This is a major departure from Notre Dame’s typical home slate, which has included no more than two night games.
Let’s examine a couple of reasons this shift may have been made to the Irish scheduling model.
Notre Dame is getting with the modern times, literally
The first reason Notre Dame may have shifted to a three-night game model is fairly simple. Night games are a spectacle in college football, and this certainly applies to Notre Dame. The stadium is louder, the vibe is more alive.
There’s an electricity in the air that just doesn’t typically exist for afternoon starts. This, combined with Notre Dame’s new policy allowing alcohol to be sold in the stadium, makes hosting more night games a no-brainer in terms of revenue and excitement level for fans.
While the excitement of more college football night games on campus may appeal to Notre Dame’s brass in the modern age, this may also just be an NBC scheduling scenario where whatever Big Ten games it plans to host this date will be slotted during the daytime, leaving the Irish an open primetime window to play in.
While this slight change in typical scheduling may not seem like a big deal, it’s just the latest sign of all things Notre Dame Football modernizing, something that has become a staple in the Marcus Freeman-Pete Bevacqua era in South Bend.
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