Clemson-Notre Dame announce 12-game series

Clemson and Notre Dame have struck a deal to play a 12-game annual series to begin in 2027, the schools announced Tuesday. The Tigers and Fighting Irish were already set to play in 2027-28, and again in 2031, 2034 and 2037, but Tuesday's agreement will fill in the gaps between them. 

Clemson already plays South Carolina each Thanksgiving Saturday, and has future home-and-homes arranged with Georgia and Oklahoma ahead as well. It remains to be seen how those games will be affected, if at all. 

But the bigger downstream affect of Tuesday's news isn't just about Clemson's future schedule. It's about Wake Forest's, and Pitt's, and Boston College's.

The Clemson series will count toward Notre Dame's five annual ACC games, a deal the Irish and the conference struck as Notre Dame left the Big East for the ACC in Olympic sports back in 2012. In addition to now-annual games with Clemson, Yahoo reported that Notre Dame is expected to play Florida State and Miami more often moving forward as well.

The moves come as part of the ACC's "success initiative," which brings more money to the ACC schools that win on the field, reach the College Football Playoff, and attract large television audiences to ACC games, which was spurred by Florida State and Clemson suing to get out of the ACC's grant of rights contract. 

Scheduling more games with Notre Dame against Clemson, FSU and Miami stacks the deck in those schools' favor in terms of drawing big TV audiences, as well as opportunities to boost their strength of schedule in the eyes of the CFP's selection committee.

Which is entirely the point.

If Clemson is playing Notre Dame annually and FSU/Miami semi-annually, that leaves two-ish spots per year split among the ACC's 14 remaining teams. Every game Notre Dame plays against Clemson is one they're not playing against Duke, or SMU, or Louisville.

And, again, that's the point.

It remains to be seen if FSU and Clemson could have actually gotten out of their grant of rights contract, but the two schools at least bluffed hard enough that everyone else in the ACC was forced to reckon with what life would be like without the Seminoles and the Tigers (and perhaps the Hurricanes and the Tar Heels as well). The ACC made 20 appearances in the 100 most-watched games of 2024 (200 spots total), fourth among the Power 4 conferences. In 2023, when Florida State was on its way to an undefeated regular season, the number was 26. 

Everyone in the ACC has done the math, and they've come to the conclusion is that, for the time being, the best solution is to create a gated subdivision within the ACC neighborhood in which its traditional football powers get more -- money, games with Notre Dame, premier TV windows -- than everyone else. 

Update: ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said at the conference's spring meetings that the games will not count toward Notre Dame's ACC contract.