ESPN’s College GameDay is making the trip back to Provo, and this one comes with real weight behind it.
For Week 7, the show will set up at BYU for the first time in 17 years, ahead of No. 3 Notre Dame’s visit to No.
8 BYU on Oct. 17 at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
It’s a matchup between two unbeaten College Football Playoff contenders, and it gave GameDay a loaded stage on a crowded Saturday.
The announcement came Saturday night, with the show confirming it was headed to Provo and bringing its flagship pregame coverage to campus for the first time since 2009. That last visit, on Oct. 24, 2009, ended with TCU rolling past BYU 38-7.
“Cougar fans, it’s been awhile,” the show’s official account posted shortly after 7 p.m. ET, confirming the crew is “headed to Provo for the first time since 2009 for Notre Dame-BYU.”
BYU had been on the radar before the decision was final. On the Sept. 28 episode of the College GameDay podcast, ESPN host Rece Davis said Provo looked like a strong possibility, while making clear nothing had been locked in yet.
“I’m not trying to give away secrets, no decision has been made, but there’s a really good chance we’ll be at BYU,” Davis said.
He also pointed to the quality of the matchup itself.
Davis added that the game “might be the best game of the weekend.”
And it’s easy to see why the spot won out. The Oct. 17 slate also includes Ohio State at Indiana, a rematch of last season’s Big Ten title game, plus Florida at Texas and Alabama at Tennessee. Even so, Provo got the nod, and the timing works neatly for ESPN, with the game landing in ABC’s prime-time window.
Notre Dame’s home games are exclusive to NBC, so a trip to BYU gives ESPN a full Saturday built around the Irish. The network was just at Coleman Coliseum the previous week for Georgia at Alabama, and now it shifts to a marquee college football stage in Provo.
Both teams are still unbeaten heading into the matchup.
Notre Dame moved to 6-0 on Saturday with a 58-7 win over Stanford in South Bend, Indiana, where Marcus Freeman’s team had already opened up a 37-0 halftime lead.
BYU followed on Friday night with a 24-10 victory over Iowa State, improving to 5-0 overall and 3-0 in Big 12 play. Sophomore quarterback Bear Bachmeier delivered his best passing day of the season, throwing for 329 yards and two touchdowns, and he added a career-high 109 rushing yards. The Cougars’ 5-0 start also marked the third straight season they’ve opened with five straight wins, something that had never happened before in program history.
Kalani Sitake’s defense did its part too, holding Iowa State to 200 total yards and just 2 of 13 on third down. Still, BYU will take on Notre Dame without running back LJ Martin, the reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, who is reportedly out 4-6 weeks with an ankle injury.
The series history adds another layer to the game. Notre Dame leads the all-time matchup 7-2, but the Irish lost their last trip to Provo, falling 20-17 in 2004. The teams last met in 2022, when Notre Dame beat BYU 28-20 in Las Vegas.
This Oct. 17 meeting is also on track to be the first between two top-10 teams in LaVell Edwards Stadium history. The schools entered last season as the top two at-large teams left out of the expanded 12-team Playoff field, and the home-and-home arrangement replaced Notre Dame’s annual game against USC. BYU is scheduled to return to South Bend in 2027.
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