Notre Dame, Clemson agree to 12-year football scheduling deal

Notre Dame and Clemson have met fairly regularly over the past few years to bring them to eight matchups all-time. Now, the Fighting Irish and Tigers will be doubling that series through the next decade with the latest scheduling news between the two starting in 2027.

Per sources speaking to Ross Dellenger at Yahoo Sports, Notre Dame and Clemson have agreed to a twelve-year long scheduling deal between them through 2038. Dellenger also noted that, with this working as part of the Irish’s structure with the ACC, this could also involve games between them and two other top brands in the conference with Florida State and Miami.

“Notre Dame & Clemson have struck a 12-year annual football scheduling deal, sources tell @YahooSports. The series works independently of the ACC structure but does count as one of ND’s five ACC games,” Dellenger tweeted on Tuesday. “Irish also expected to play FSU & Miami more regularly.”

As noted by Dellenger, this series, despite the two programs agreeing to independently, will count as one of the five games that Notre Dame will play against teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference as part of their five-game affiliation with the league. It’s now a question of how this will fit onto the league’s slate and the current rotation that they have with the Fighting Irish, especially if they’re going to work the Tigers as well as the Seminoles and Hurricanes more regularly into that as three of those five games. It also gives Clemson another top-rated game outside of their eight-game schedule against the league in the ACC.

This series will begin in 2027 as it overlaps with five games already scheduled between the two with three at Clemson in 2027, 2031, and 2037 and two at Notre Dame in 2028 and 2034. This just fills in the remaining seven matchups against one another through 2038.

That’s after the two have met eight times in history with Clemson having a 5-3 lead in the series. Six of those games have been over the past decade as the Tigers have a 4-2 record against them in that span, including a 30-3 win in the Cotton Bowl as part of the 2018 College Football Playoff and a 34-10 win in 2020 as the ACC Championship during the pandemic. They’ve split a pair of matchups since the start of the Irish’s tenure under Marcus Freeman with Notre Dame winning 35-14 in South Bend in 2022 and Clemson getting a much-needed upset win at 31-23 in their latest matchup in 2023.

This comes two months after Clemson and Florida State resolved their lawsuits against the ACC. The Atlantic Coast Conference will be implementing a new revenue-distribution model with that with Clemson, Florida State, and Miami among the bigger earners in that with top-ranked games like these, whether against one another or through Notre Dame, only adding to that total.

There’s a lot of benefits, on and off the field, from this series for Notre Dame, Clemson, and the ACC. That includes fans too with two of the sport’s biggest brands set to play one another in every season well into the 2030s.