Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love has some strong feelings about reports that rival athletic directors are threatening to freeze the Irish out of future football schedules. He thinks they’re just plain scared to play them. So, are these athletic directors just running scared of the Fighting Irish, or is there more to this scheduling drama than simple fear?

“They’re scared to play us. They don’t want to play Notre Dame because we’re Notre Dame. You’re leaving us out of your schedule, it’s not a good look,” Notre Dame insider Mike Berardino posted on X. “Why not play us? That’s how I think about it.”

The alleged freeze-out is a big deal because Notre Dame needs quality opponents to prove its strength and secure a potential at-large bid. This situation could cause more damage than ever before. The entire drama began because of a College Football Playoff agreement.

There was a controversy where Notre Dame, which plays as an independent team and doesn’t belong to a major conference, was rumored to be getting some special guaranteed access or preferential treatment compared to other schools that have tough conference schedules and championship games. Naturally, this didn’t sit well with athletic directors from other major conference schools.

Those ADs felt the arrangement gave Notre Dame an unfair advantage while their own teams faced a much tougher path, which is partly true. In response, they appear to be using non-conference scheduling as leverage, threatening to refuse future games against the Irish. This season, however, has been an exception.

The 2026 schedule already looks worse than 2025. As of now, the only truly marquee opponents are Miami and USC, raising concerns that the Irish could face the same fate again next season.

If you look at their 2025 campaign, the Irish wrapped up the regular season looking pretty awesome, snagging a sweet 10-2 record and crushing it with a 10-game winning streak.

Despite being pound-for-pound a top-5 team in the country and a legitimate argument for being one of the 12 best, the Fighting Irish were left out of the playoffs. Even their athletic director, Pete Bevacqua, was super mad, basically saying someone straight up “stole” the playoff from his players.

“What we were really surprised by and disappointed was how the ACC conference really went on a social media campaign, in my opinion, attacking our football program,” Bevacqua said. “Miami had done that, and I get it. All’s fair in a rivalry, decades-long rivalry between Notre Dame and Miami, and that’s the spirit of the universities and the football programs and fandom, and that’s what makes college football special, whether it’s Notre Dame-Miami, Note Dame-USC, Michigan, Ohio State.

“But we felt this was different, and it raised a lot of eyebrows. We made our feelings known that we didn’t really understand this, and it kind of puzzled us that a conference that’s home to over 600 of our student athletes walking around this campus today, I guess, chose to go down that road. I guess intellectually I understand it, but I certainly don’t agree with it. And why would you attack an unbelievably important business partner of yours in football and a member of your conference in twenty-four other sports? I’m one person. I don’t see the logic in that.”

The whole mess came down to the final Selection Sunday. Notre Dame was sitting at No. 10 one week, and then poof, Miami jumped them for the last spot. The committee kept pointing to that head-to-head game back in Week 1, where Miami won. But people were like, ‘Hold up, you guys have ranked Notre Dame higher almost every week since then!’

It just felt off, maybe even a little political, because Notre Dame is an independent team. The whole thing was such a bummer that the Irish just said ‘no thanks’ to any other bowl games and went home. At this point, the only silver lining left for Notre Dame is finding out whether their RB1 can cap it all off by winning the Heisman Trophy.

Jeremiyah Love’s Heisman chance: Analysis

Need to start by giving the props to the Irish: Jeremiyah Love is the only RB on the list. While that’s a huge honor, his chances of actually taking home the big award are super slim. Truth be told, he’s considered a massive longshot, with betting odds way out there around +15k or even more. The smart money is bet on Fernando Mendoza (Hoosiers), who’s the heavy favorite after leading his team to a perfect 13-0 season.

Love had an absolutely incredible season for the Fighting Irish and Marcus Freeman. He racked up 1,372 rushing yards, crossed the goal line 18 times on the ground, and also set a new Notre Dame single-season record with 21 total touchdowns.

He was averaging nearly seven yards every time he touched the ball. Shout-out for his performance against USC and Syracuse. But at the end of the day, there are simply bigger boys than him this season.

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Mind you, it is tough for a running back to win the Heisman these days. The award usually goes to quarterbacks. On top of that, because Notre Dame is an independent program, Love did not get the extra boost that comes from playing in a major conference championship game. That’s exactly where Fernando Mendoza separated himself from Julian Sayin and moved to the good side of the voters.

The winner will be announced on December 13 around 7 pm ET, but it would be a shocking upset if Jeremiyah Love’s name is called on Saturday night.