Notre Dame AD Shares Whether Fighting Irish Will Continue Going to Bowl Games

Coach Marcus Freeman's team will be home for the holidays this year.

Pete Bevacqua addressed whether the time of the bowl game was past for Notre Dame Tuesday. / Michael Clubb / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

On Sunday, Notre Dame surprised the college football world by declining a bowl berth after being left out of the College Football Playoff. The decision spurred two days of thinkpieces over whether the time of the bowl game is past.

Even as he continued to fume over the Fighting Irish's exclusion Tuesday, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua pushed back on the notion that Notre Dame had exited the bowl game business.

"The team making the decision not to play in this year's bowl game was a decision solely isolated to this year," Bevacqua told reporters via Matt Fortuna of The Inside Zone.

The Fighting Irish have long enjoyed a prickly relationship with bowl games and postseason play in general. After beating Stanford in the 1925 Rose Bowl, Notre Dame ceased bowl participation for north of four decades until meeting Texas in the 1970 Cotton Bowl. Various rules and regulations protected the Fighting Irish's ability to play in major bowl games under the Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance and Bowl Championship Series systems; similar protections under the CFP system will return in 2026.

Notre Dame is scheduled to return to play on Sept. 6, when it will open '26 against Wisconsin in Green Bay, Wisc.

---

More College Football on Sports Illustrated

feed