With the future expansion of the College Football Playoff to 24 teams continuing to reshape non-conference scheduling, Purdue has added a road game at West Virginia for the 2027 season and placed its long-running rivalry series with Notre Dame on hold, the schools announced Tuesday.
The Boilermakers will travel to Morgantown, W.Va., in 2027 for a matchup against the Mountaineers at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium on a date that will be announced later.
“With the expected expansion of the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, there will be scheduling parameters for schools to follow, including having 10 regular season games against power conference opponents,” said Purdue Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Tommy McClelland. “Getting Coach Odom’s program into matchups that best serve our goals and ambitions has been a focus of mine since arriving in West Lafayette, and we are excited to add this game with West Virginia. The tradition-rich rivalry of Purdue and Notre Dame, a matchup that has been played on and off 90 times in program history, will be reevaluated for potential addition to future schedules.”
Purdue’s 2027 non-conference slate currently includes home games against FCS member UAlbany on Aug. 28 and Miami (Ohio) on Sept. 11, both at Ross-Ade Stadium. In Big Ten play, the Boilermakers are slated to host Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, Penn State, and UCLA while making road trips to Maryland, Nebraska, Ohio State, and Oregon.
The addition of Purdue provides West Virginia with the 10 Power Four opponents expected under the expanded playoff model. Prior to the agreement, the Mountaineers’ 2027 schedule featured non-conference games against Ohio, Southern Miss, and VMI alongside their Big 12 slate. As a result, one of those previously scheduled contests is expected to be rescheduled or canceled.
“We are looking forward to hosting Purdue in Morgantown next season for the first time since 1995,” West Virginia Vice President and Director of Athletics Wren Baker said. “It is an important addition for us, because it now gives us 10 Power 4 games on our schedule, which is a requirement in the expanded College Football Playoff. It also gives us a regional Big Ten opponent visiting Milan Puskar Stadium, which I know Mountaineer Nation will be excited about. With the addition of Purdue, we will have further announcements on our 2027 schedule as we finalize everything in the coming days.”
The matchup will mark the first meeting between Purdue and West Virginia since 1996.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame now has a vacancy on its 2027 schedule following Purdue’s decision to step away from the rivalry series. While no replacement opponent has been finalized, speculation has already begun regarding a potential marquee matchup. On a recent Irish Illustrated Insider Podcast, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Sampson discussed the possibility of the Fighting Irish facing Oregon in a neutral-site game at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, potentially during Week 1 or Week 2 of the 2027 season.
View Comments (2)
Notre Dame's AD is Pete Bevacqua, not Pete Sampson.
ND replacing PU with a neutral site game vs UO in LA the Sunday night before Labor Day in 2027 makes a TON of sense since NBC really wants to fill that Sunday night with a high-profile CFB game.
The B10 would insist on a return game owned by the B10, but ND could end 2028 with a neutral site game vs UO (say in the Bay Area/LV) owned by the B10 (realistically going to NBC or CBS) and that would work out well for ND too as the Domers always want to end the season somewhere warmish (and ideally in CA). Ducks-Huskies would have to move off the final weekend but UW could always replace with a season-ending Apple Cup game.
Only issues are that that would leave ND with only 5 home games in 2027 (along with 2 neutral site games) and NBC would only own 6 ND games in each of 2027 and 2028, but NBc probably is willing to sacrifice a low-viewership 7th owned game vs. some G6 patsy for more control over ND's schedule/setting up a high-viewership Labor Day Sunday primetime game every year.