Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Bowling And Brutal Schedules when it comes to postseason destinations in 2012 and 2013. After using up their one-time Champs Sports Bowl bid last season against Florida State, the Fighting Irish are officially without a bowl tie-in. Irish athletics director Jack Swarbrick hopes the The Notre Dame football program is a free agent next bowl cycle will feature affiliations at every tier of the bowl system beginning in 2014. A path to the Orange Bowl is one discussion currently taking place. "In the new postseason structure, there are three contract bowls and three host bowls," Swarbrick said. "The host bowls won't have contract partners. They have to be open in order to provide the access we want. We wound up with the Orange Bowl with a strange circumstance of you knew what one side of the contract bowl was [an ACC team], but how do you create the other side? What's the best ap- proach to that? "I think the focus is on trying to come up with a system among multiple parties who can provide the other side of that game. Conferences and us are in the discussions and there's nothing done. We're continuing to work on it and we'll see how where it comes out." Swarbrick explained that less-prestigious bowl tie-ins, which are necessary in down years, are impossible to finalize PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME MEDIA RELATIONS until the three contract bowls (Rose, Champions and Orange) are set. What Swarbrick candidly admitted is that Notre Dame can help avoid postseason uncertainty in the future by win- Aviva Stadium in Dublin will host Notre Dame's first game of the season, against Navy, this year and kick off a daunting road schedule for the Irish. ning enough games to get into the top tier of bowls. That will be hard this year, with what most consider the toughest schedule in the nation. Swarbrick joked about how the AD needed to be fired for piecing together such a difficult slate. He isn't, however, making any excuses in advance. "I'm not going to council patience," he said. "It is what it is. You sign up for it and you play it and you go into it think- ing you can win. That's what we will do. I'm not using it as a plea for people to be patient. I think it's exciting football; I think it will challenge us." Several factors make this year's schedule so daunting, he said. "[Playing in] East Lansing, Norman, and the Coliseum and Dublin in one year — that's tough," Swarbrick explained. "Give me the ability to shift some home and away sites and the schedule feels a little different. That was one of the challenges. As you said, part of it is you can't predict and we had a lot of those things go uniquely against us. I don't know what the over-under of both [USC quarterback] Matt Barkley and [Oklahoma quarterback] Landry Jones coming back was, but it was a surprise. You get a number of those things that happen to you where you just say, 'Boy.' "All of that has combined to produce a uniquely challenging schedule. But you know what? It's going to be a good test of where we are. We're going to find out a lot about ourselves this year." AUGUST 2012 62 — Wes Morgan