Saturday night’s matchup in Provo has been a long time coming for BYU, and it arrives with the kind of stakes that make a regular-season game feel bigger. No.
8 BYU will host No. 2 Notre Dame in what is being billed as arguably the biggest game ever played at LaVell Edwards Stadium, with both teams sitting in the top 10 and chasing College Football Playoff positioning.
It also carries a history that stretches well beyond the nine times these programs have met on the field. Notre Dame is finally making the trip back to Provo for the first time since 2004, when BYU beat the Fighting Irish 20-17.
The road to this game has been anything but straightforward. When BYU went independent in 2010, the Cougars announced a six-game series with Notre Dame, and that agreement was a major part of the decision to make the move. The original setup called for four games in South Bend and two in Provo.
Notre Dame welcomed BYU to South Bend in 2012 and 2013, but when the return trip to Provo came due, the Fighting Irish delayed and eventually backed out.
Nearly a decade passed before the teams met again, with the 2022 game taking place in Las Vegas as the third matchup in the original six-game series. Notre Dame owed BYU a home game, but the teams settled on a neutral-site meeting instead, and Notre Dame also secured the home-team designation and the bulk of the tickets. The result was a pro-Notre Dame crowd in Las Vegas.
The relationship between the schools has had another twist too. Notre Dame and BYU were the first two teams left out of the College Football Playoff, and ESPN wanted them to meet in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. Notre Dame declined that invitation, leaving BYU to play Georgia Tech instead.
Then in December, the schools put a new two-game series on the schedule, beginning Saturday in Provo. Kalani Sitake said Notre Dame reached out to BYU and agreed to play the first game on the Cougars’ field.
In Sitake’s view, the answer was immediate: "YES, there was no hesitation. We want to play that game."
Sitake has also said he hopes the teams can keep playing each other more often in the future. Notre Dame’s need for a game with playoff value came after USC backed out of its long-running rivalry with the Irish, and BYU was eager to accept the chance to host.
For the Cougars, this is the one they’ve been waiting for. For Notre Dame, it’s a trip that had been put off for years. On Saturday, both programs land at the center of the college football conversation.
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Kalani Sitake Has Extra Reason To Feel This Notre Dame Showdown
A little more than two decades after BYU knocked off Notre Dame in one of the signature wins of the LaVell Edwards era, Kalani Sitake still has a personal tie to that day. He was on the field for the Cougars in 2004, when the program handled one of college footballs bluebloods, and now he gets to lead BYU into another meeting with the Irish with the memory of that victory hanging in the background.
Sitake knows this version of Notre Dame brings far more than reputation, pointing to its depth and its recent run of wins while also showing clear respect for the staff and the standard the program has built. The matchup also carries some history for BYU beyond the nostalgia, with previous meetings giving the Cougars reasons to believe and Sitakes coaching record against the Irish adding another layer to a game that already feels bigger than a typical nonconference date. [Read more 🡒]