James Franklin has sent a message to Notre Dame and the college football world ahead of Penn State’s semifinal duel in the Orange Bowl on Thursday night.
The 52-year-old, who is in his 11th season with Penn State and has the program on the doorstep of its first national championship appearance since 1986, expressed a desire to see more standardization with the expansion of the College Football Playoff.
And to him, that means an independent behemoth like Notre Dame finally joining a conference.
“It should be consistent across college football,” Franklin told reporters Wednesday. “This is no knock at [head coach Marcus Freeman] or Notre Dame, but I think everybody should be in a conference. I think everybody should play a conference championship game, or nobody should play a conference championship game. I think everybody should play the same number of conference games.”
The ever-growing Big Ten, which completed its manifest destiny by adding Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington to become the Big 18, held a nine-game conference slate for the 2024 season, as did the Big 12. The SEC and ACC had eight-game conference schedules, while the Mountain West slate was seven games.
“I was not a math major at East Stroudsburg, but just the numbers are going to make things more challenging if you’re playing one more conference game,” Franklin said.
Notre Dame, which went 11-1 during the regular season, has joined the ACC for other sports but remains independent for football while playing a few ACC teams each year.
Since the Fighting Irish are not in a conference, they are not eligible for a first-round bye in the new 12-team CFP format, with the byes reserved for the four highest-ranked conference champions.
“I’m a guy that just [thinks], ‘Tell us what we’re doing and let’s go, and you move forward,’” Freeman said. “I love where we’re at right now. [Athletic director] Pete Bevacqua and our Notre Dame administration will continue to make decisions that are best for our program.”
The winner of Thursday’s game will play the winner of Friday’s Texas-Ohio State game in the national championship on Jan. 20.
