Indiana Reportedly Asked Out of Future Home-and-Home Series With Notre Dame

Notre Dame’s scheduled home-and-home football series with Indiana has been canceled at Indiana’s request, according to reporting from The Athletic’s Pete Sampson and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde. The two schools announced the agreement on April 19, 2021, with Indiana set to visit Notre Dame Stadium on Aug. 31, 2030, and the Irish scheduled to play in Bloomington on Sept. 27, 2031.

The reporting surfaced on Aug. 3, the same day Notre Dame officially announced a renewed four-game rivalry series with USC running from 2030 through 2033. The opener of that series falls on Aug. 31, 2030, the date Indiana had held for nine years.

Under the terms of the 2021 contract, per Sports Illustrated, the canceling party owes $250,000 when the game is called off more than two years out, $500,000 with one to two years’ notice, and $1 million inside a year of kickoff. At more than four years from the 2030 date, the lowest tier applies.

ESPN noted it is not yet clear whether the cancellation was mutual. Every other outlet carrying the story, including CBS Sports and On3, has attributed it to Indiana’s request via Forde’s sourcing. Neither school has issued a statement or explained the decision, and all of the reporting traces back to people briefed on it rather than an athletic department release.

Indiana backs away from another Power Four series

The Notre Dame cancellation is the third Power Four non-conference series Indiana has backed out of under Curt Cignetti. The Hoosiers withdrew from the final two games of a series with Louisville in 2023 and canceled a home-and-home with Virginia in 2025, reportedly paying a $500,000 fee to do so. With the Irish series gone, Indiana has no Power Four opponents left anywhere on its future non-conference schedules.

Cignetti has never been coy about the reasoning. Asked at Big Ten Media Days in July 2025 about the Virginia cancellation, he told CBS Sports, “We figured we would just adopt SEC scheduling philosophy. Some people don’t like it. I’m more focused in on those nine conference games.”

A year later, at the same event, he expanded on where he thinks the sport is headed.

“I suspect down the road something will happen with scheduling, sort of standardizing scheduling,” Cignetti said, via On3. “We’ve got two conferences (the Big Ten and SEC) that are sorta above the rest right now.”

Three series canceled and nothing left in the Power Four column means Indiana’s future non-conference slates are built entirely from teams outside it. The Hoosiers went from a program that agreed to play Notre Dame twice to one whose toughest non-conference game is whatever the Big Ten schedule hands it.

USC takes the 2030 spot

Notre Dame does not have a hole to fill in 2030. The USC series slots into the opener, giving the Irish four straight years of the rivalry after the two-year pause that followed the 2025 season. Pete Bevacqua framed the renewal in the terms Notre Dame has always used for it.

“We want to play USC in Notre Dame Stadium, and they want to play us in L.A. Memorial Coliseum,” Bevacqua told Sports Illustrated. “And frankly, that’s the way it should be.”

USC athletic director Jen Cohen said the rivalry “holds a special place in college football history, and we are happy to resume this series,” and Lincoln Riley told ESPN that “our desire to play this game—part of our college football history—has never been questioned, never will.”

The remaining question is 2031

What Notre Dame loses is a regional Power Four game on the 2031 schedule. Notre Dame leads the all-time series with Indiana 24-5-1, and the schools have met once since 1991: the 27-17 CFP first-round win at Notre Dame Stadium in December 2024, a playoff game rather than a scheduled one. The 2030 and 2031 games would have been the first regular-season meetings between the two since 1991, closing a gap of four decades.