Indiana Cancels Notre Dame Series, Then Cignetti Demands a 2-for-1 Deal Anyway

Indiana requested the cancellation of its scheduled 2030 and 2031 home-and-home series with Notre Dame, according to reporting from The Athletic and confirmed by On3's Pete Nakos. That cleared a spot on Notre Dame's calendar, which the Irish filled by reviving their historic rivalry with USC for a four-year series beginning in 2030, first reported by ESPN's Adam Rittenberg.

Then this week, Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti told reporters he'd actually like to play Notre Dame again. Just not evenly.

"I'd like to play Notre Dame," Cignetti said, according to On3's Alex Bylington. "They ought to come to our place twice, and we'll go there once, since they're not in a conference."

The comment landed awkwardly given the timeline. Indiana was the party that walked away from the series, per The Athletic's reporting. Cignetti's remarks came without him acknowledging that detail, and he made them shortly after telling Big Ten Media Days that the Big Ten is "the best league in football" and that "we don't run a hype machine up here in the Midwest."

The scheduling pattern is not new

This isn't Indiana's first canceled marquee non-conference game under Cignetti. The program paid $2 million to cancel a series with Virginia, replacing the Cavaliers with Kennesaw State and Austin Peay, according to Brobible. A Louisville series was scrapped under previous coach Tom Allen, leaving Cignetti's first two seasons without a Power Four non-conference opponent.

Indiana currently has no Power Four opponents on its non-conference schedule through 2032, according to FBSchedules.com data cited by Brobible. This season the Hoosiers play North Texas, Howard and Western Kentucky before Big Ten play begins, according to the NY Post.

There's a defensible football logic here. Indiana plays nine Big Ten conference games. Adding a difficult non-conference opponent means more risk of a loss that could hurt College Football Playoff seeding, while SEC and ACC teams playing eight conference games have more room to schedule a marquee non-conference game and still control their own record. Cignetti made exactly that argument in 2025 when Indiana dropped a game against a Power Four opponent, saying the program had "adopted an SEC scheduling philosophy," per Brobible. Coaches who play it safe with scheduling aren't cheating. They're managing playoff math in a 12-team format where a two-loss power-conference record is often good enough.

Cignetti has spent multiple offseasons attacking the SEC specifically for padding schedules and ducking real competition. Yellowhammer News's Michael Brauner called it out directly: canceling a ranked non-conference opponent a week after criticizing another conference for doing the same thing is hard to defend as anything other than hypocritical.

Fan reaction was swift

The cancellation drew heavy criticism online, according to the Irish Star, which quoted fans on social media calling Indiana "scared" and accusing the Big Ten of avoiding meaningful non-conference games entirely. One user wrote that "the CFP will only look at wins and losses, you could easily play both of these games but that's not in the B1G DNA."

Notre Dame reporter Nicole Auerbach confirmed that Indiana's cancellation directly enabled the USC series to return, tweeting that Indiana's decision "helped pave the way" for the renewed rivalry beginning in 2030.

The all-time series still favors Notre Dame heavily

Notre Dame leads the all-time series 24-1-5, according to multiple outlets including Yahoo Sports and slapthesign, and has won the last seven meetings. The two programs met most recently in the first round of the 2024 College Football Playoff, when Notre Dame beat Indiana 27-17 in South Bend during Cignetti's first season. Cignetti made pointed pre-game comments that didn't age well once his team lost.

None of that changes the scheduling math. Notre Dame has a locked four-year commitment with USC through 2033. Indiana has no Power Four non-conference opponent on the books through 2032. If Cignetti wants a rematch on the terms he described this week, Notre Dame has no obvious reason to agree to a lopsided 2-for-1 arrangement with a program that just walked away from an even series.