Notre Dame football has a new future opponent on the schedule.

The Fighting Irish and Nebraska Cornhuskers will play a home-and-home series beginning in 2032, with Notre Dame traveling to Lincoln on Oct. 30, 2032, and Nebraska visiting Notre Dame Stadium on Oct. 29, 2033. Head coach Marcus Freeman and the Irish are locking in marquee nonconference games years in advance, but the question is whether this particular matchup carries the weight it once would have.

There are positives to this announcement. From a historical perspective, Notre Dame and Nebraska are two of the most storied programs in college football.

Notre Dame’s national titles, Heisman Trophy winners, and NFL legends speak for themselves, and Nebraska carries its own proud tradition. The 1995 Cornhuskers team remains firmly entrenched in the minds of fans who remember the dominance of Tom Osborne’s program, the talent of players like Lawrence Phillips and Ahman Green, and the era that made Lincoln one of the most feared destinations in the sport.

I’ve been an advocate for this kind of scheduling, and I’ve been very upfront about it. The thing that separates college football on a personal level is the rivalries, the competitive hatred, the competitive anxiety. That is what makes fandom so much fun.

Having a historical series like Notre Dame and Nebraska is cool in a vacuum. People are going to watch because our parents, older siblings, older cousins, and maybe our own age group remember what Nebraska was.

There is also something to be said for being proactive with future scheduling. The current state of college football changes quickly, whether that involves conference realignment or the broader uncertainty around super conferences and the NCAA’s future structure. Having bigger games on the docket years in advance is smart planning.

With Notre Dame’s allegiance to the ACC in other sports and its unique football independence, attaching itself to Big Ten and SEC programs makes strategic sense. I think the ACC is going to continue to trend downward, and the Big Ten and SEC are going to continue to trend upward.

Identifying partnerships inside the Big Ten with a program like Nebraska, which still carries institutional power, is a reasonable move.

Why the announcement felt underwhelming

In a vacuum, I’m good with this. I don’t hate it at all.

But in terms of where Notre Dame is right now, the announcement just didn’t excite me. At the end of the day, I will enjoy the games because I am a Notre Dame fan and I will watch every single week.

If Notre Dame beats Nebraska, it’s a great place to be. But I don’t know if Nebraska would have been a school I prioritized.

The problem with where college football is today is that Nebraska is just not as important, for lack of a better word, as they used to be. They’re not as glamorous as what they once were.

For a lot of people, this matchup is not going to move the needle for Notre Dame because you don’t know what Nebraska will be in six years. Perhaps they will be really good, or perhaps they’ll be a lot of what they’ve been in the 2000s: an okay program, not a great one.

Right now, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule is in a tough spot where he has to prove he is the guy long term, or the program is probably going to make a change at some point if things don’t start getting better. It has felt stagnated, and I don’t know if Nebraska definitely has its guy in Lincoln for the long haul.

I question the stability of Nebraska football, and I question the brand identity of the program in today’s college football landscape.

Notre Dame should aim higher with future scheduling

There are other Big Ten programs, and potentially SEC programs, that would have generated far more excitement if Notre Dame had scheduled them instead. It takes two sides to make a scheduling agreement work, so if Nebraska was willing and others weren’t, then fine.

But I do hope that for the sake of Notre Dame’s scheduling perception, the Irish continue pursuing series that carry more present-day weight.

Every single year I have to hear about how Notre Dame doesn’t play anybody. I think that criticism is true in some instances but wildly over-talked about in others. The schedule is not as weak as some people believe.

Scheduling Nebraska feels like attaching yourself to the past a little more when the program needs to be progressive in its mindset. If this home-and-home had been announced in the early 2000s, it would have resonated on a completely different level. It would have pushed both brands and excited the fanbase. In 2026, the reaction is more muted, and understandably so.

I want identifiable rivalries for Notre Dame’s future. I want series that involve the Big Ten and maybe the SEC. Nebraska just would not have been one of my early choices. The announcement is fine, but it left me wanting more.