Notre Dame kicker Spencer Porath is about to step back into Ross-Ade Stadium, and this time he’ll be wearing Irish green instead of Purdue gold.
That kind of return usually comes with some extra noise, and special teams coordinator Marty Biagi isn’t pretending otherwise. But he said the plan is simple: treat the moment like any other, even if the student section tries to make it anything but.
“Try and take it as a faceless opponent,” Biagi said after practice on Tuesday evening, Sept. 22.
“We try to do a really good job with our sports psych. Very similar to - probably not on the same level - but even when Riley (Leonard) went back.”
Notre Dame has dealt with that kind of emotional homecoming before. In 2024, Leonard’s return as a former Duke quarterback helped set the stage for a win over Texas A&M, a game that put him back in front of former coach Mike Elko and assistants who knew him from his Durham days. Joey Ramaeker, Notre Dame’s director of sports psychology, was part of the process there too.
“Coach Ramaeker does a good job of trying to find similarities of those kinds of things,” Biagi said.
Porath, though, sounds like a player who already had the right frame of mind months ago. Asked on Aug. 6 how he expected his Week 4 trip to Purdue to feel, he didn’t hesitate.
“I think it will be awesome,” he said. “I loved everything about Purdue.
Everyone's great. The coaching staff is great, the players.
I can't wait, and I'll be excited.”
His path back to West Lafayette has been unusual. Porath quietly enrolled at Notre Dame for the spring semester without telling Purdue’s coaching staff he planned to leave, and his transfer commitment became public on Jan.
- On April 1, the NCAA Division I Cabinet put new penalties in place for schools that sign so-called "ghost transfers," with the policy applied retroactively to Feb.
- Those penalties include fines of 20% of a program's annual budget and a half-season suspension for the head coach.
If a school doesn’t self-report within 15 days, the NCAA can tack on another 5% to the fine and 10% to the coach’s suspension.
The on-field part of Porath’s story has been steadier. He has made 15 of 17 field-goal tries as a Purdue sophomore in 2025, and at Notre Dame he has been just as dependable, even after his first miss in six attempts. That miss came on a 39-yard try against Michigan State, when the kick drifted wide right with the Irish already ahead 27-10 and nine minutes left.
Biagi said Porath handled it the way coaches love to see.
“He was mad at himself,” Biagi said. “He knows he did a cut swing or a slice swing. The best part is I had the tablet and I walked over, and he goes, ‘I don’t need to see it.’“
That kind of response fits the profile Biagi described. The former Marshall kicker/punter said Porath is wired to move on fast and stay focused on the next snap, not the last mistake.
“Spencer’s so locked in,” Biagi said. “When he crosses over onto the field, he’s really dialed.”
That same steadiness should matter this weekend, especially with Purdue’s crowd waiting and the Ross-Ade Brigade likely ready to remind him where he used to play. The Irish staff is banking on routine, preparation and a player who has already shown he doesn’t need much convincing when it comes to correcting his own mistakes.
Biagi said the main thing for Porath is straightforward.
“just having a true approach and a game plan,” he said.
Purdue’s current kicker, freshman Jacobo Echeverria Lozano, has made seven of eight attempts this season and has a long of 39 yards.
For Porath, though, the bigger story is the return itself: back to the place where he spent two years, back to the stadium where he’ll now be on the other sideline, and back into a setting that should test his poise more than his leg.
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