The Florida Gators have canceled their future home-and-home football series with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, according to an Associated Press report published Tuesday.
Florida and Notre Dame originally agreed to the series in 2021, with the first matchup scheduled for November 15, 2031, at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Ind. The return game was slated for September 11, 2032, at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Fla.
According to the report, Florida exercised a contractual provision allowing the series to be canceled without penalty if the SEC adopted a nine-game conference schedule. The conference implemented that change beginning with the current season.
Without the clause, Florida would have owed liquidated damages of $750,000 per game, as the cancellation notice was delivered more than two years before each scheduled contest.
Notre Dame has already secured a replacement opponent for the vacant 2031 date. Earlier Tuesday, the Fighting Irish announced a home-and-home series with the Washington Huskies, beginning in South Bend in 2031 and concluding in Seattle in 2034.
Given the SEC’s move to a nine-game conference schedule, combined with conference and College Football Playoff scheduling expectations that power-conference programs face at least 10 power opponents annually, retaining the Notre Dame series became less practical for Florida. The Gators already satisfy that benchmark each season through their annual rivalry matchup with Florida State.
The canceled series with Notre Dame joins a growing list of future non-conference matchups Florida has scrapped in recent years, including previously scheduled series against Arizona State, California, and NC State.
They play FSU yearly, why would they want to play another ACC team?
it’s a shame to see this happen. Would have been a nice series.
This is the risk of the Playoff setting a “minimum requirement” of 10 power opponents: basically nobody will ever play 11. I would expect Florida to cancel their upcoming series with Colorado and UCF as well, and play only Florida State out of conference.
Probably. But this will likely only apply to teams that have an annual power non-conference opponent.
None of the schools who want 7 home games a season every season, yes. Some of the schools (generally the lesser P4 teams who don’t pull in large attendance) who feel paying for more than 1 (FCS) buy game a season is too expensive for them probably will still have 2 HaH series a year (including with 2 P4 OOC opponents some seasons).