Brian, it is time to preview Notre Dame's seventh opponent of the regular season here on the Irish Breakdown podcast, brought to you by our friends over at Van Duel.

We're talking about the BYU Cougars, who the discussion about the Notre Dame BYU matchup really started last year after Notre Dame elected to sit out of the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

And then everybody started looking forward to this matchup here on October 17th out in Provo, Utah. And this is a game where you know, you and I would like to see this series extended past 2027 because I think it would be beneficial for both programs. I think that'd be a lot of fun to watch in future seasons. That's a big one, trip. Before we jump into that, I do want to reiterate that because it's like that became like a trendy thing this summer.

This is something you and I've been talking about since they announced this game.

Yep.

I would love to see Notre Dame and BYU schedule something more long term.

And I felt this way for a long time.

This isn't new.

This is something that I felt for a while.

I just think there's something,

there's just something intriguing about the contrast of these two schools, you know, and, you know,

the fact that for a long time, they were the outsiders, you know, trying to compete. Now,

BYU wasn't an independent, but like they were a whack team. They won his national championship as a,

or I think we're the co-national champions, as a whack team, Western Athletic Conference. I don't mean like, well, no, those guys are whack. I mean, that was literally the name of their conference, the WAC, the Western Athletic Conference. Yeah. And, you know, produced a Heisman trophy winners. And they had that had that really like revolutionary West Coast offense under

you know, Lavelle Edwards and and the contrast in uniforms, you know, the white helmets with the

with the Y in it compared to the gold helmets and the Navy blue compared to the royal blue or,

you know, and they're just, there was, you know, the team that threw the ball all the time compared to the team that ran the option and there's just all these contrasts.

And then, oh, by the way, Catholics is one school's Catholic, the other school's Mormon, you know, like, and in some ways they hold very high standards of their student athletes, but it's also very different in a lot of ways, you know, and so it is, it's a very interesting kind of comparison between

those two schools that I think can make for a really fun rivalry, non-conference rivalry. And

you've got all these big 12 teams saying, hey, we're not afraid of Notre Dame. We'll put your money

where your mouth is. Schedule, you know, schedule, make a long-term schedule like Clemson did. I would love to see that. I would love to see Notre Dame do that. Now, what I like to see maybe a 10-year deal, I don't know. I mean, I'd be fine with it, but like maybe it's four on, two off, four on, two off, whatever, but I would love to see Notre Dame and BYU do something more regularly. And that's not because I think it's an easy, easy wins, because I don't think it will be. You know, the more times you go out to Provo, the more opportunity there is to get beat. That's just the reality of it, you know, but it's because they're a good program, because they're a team that we respect. There are a team that you've got to go out there and you've to ball out for if you want to win those games is why I would love to see this rivalry, like be created. I don't, it's not a rivalry now. I'd love to see it be created. I think right now there's this disdain for Notre Dame from BYU fans because Notre Dame refused to go out there playing like Notre Dame did not duck BYU in that they were afraid to play BYU but Notre Dame did refuse to

go. because Notre Dame refused to go out there and play them. Like, Notre Dame did not duck BYU in that they were afraid to play BYU, but Notre Dame did refuse to do what they contractually obligated to do, which is go out and play in Provo again. That's fair to say. I mean, you're taking it too far when you're like, you know, they ducked BYU. We're ducking BYU. There's a lot of years, Notre Dame would, you know, would have liked to have played BYU instead of some of the other teams on the schedule because they weren't good in those years. There's been years they've been very good. It was, there were other reasons why, and I don't agree with that. They should have, they should have gone out and played BYU. And I didn't like how Texas and Notre Dame kind of convinced BYU to go independent and then didn't follow through on the promises they kind of, behind the scene promises they made to BYU to get them to go independent and leave them out in west. I'd be pissed about that if I was a BYU fan. I would. And this would be kind of a way to rectify that is to kind of create a little bit of a longer term rivalry.

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