Fans hoping to see Indiana play a marquee non-conference opponent will have to wait even longer than expected. Indiana has canceled its home-and-home series against Notre Dame -- slated for 2030-31 -- according to The Athletic.
On Monday morning, Notre Dame and USC announced that they have renewed their historic rivalry with a four-game series. On the flip side, the Fighting Irish and Hoosiers will no longer visit one another at the start of the next decade.
Indiana has already taken plenty of heat for its underwhelming non-conference slates under Curt Cignetti, but the team could point to its series against Notre Dame in the distant future as evidence that the schedule would eventually get tougher. That's no longer the case. The Hoosiers don't have any Power Four non-conference opponents on the docket, making it one of the weakest slates in the country.
Indiana's future non-conference opponents
- 2026: North Texas, Howard, Western Kentucky
- 2027: Kennesaw State, Indiana State, UMass
- 2028: Austin Peay, Eastern Michigan, Miami (OH)
- 2029: Ball State, Eastern Illinois, Western Kentucky
- 2030: Indiana State, Delaware
- 2032: UConn
In the wake of his national championship run with Indiana, Cignetti has fired shots at the SEC and defended the Hoosiers' scheduling practices, saying his team has chosen to "adopt the SEC philosophy."
That argument holds a little less water now that the SEC has expanded to a nine-game conference schedule and requires its teams to play one Power Four team in non-conference play. With Indiana and Notre Dame nixing their upcoming series, pressure will be on the Hoosiers to replace that series with another Power Four opponent.
Cignetti and the Hoosiers have nothing else to prove coming off a national championship, but it's a bad look for the program to schedule as though it's still just trying to reach a bowl game every year.
