As of 3:30 PM Eastern Time this Saturday there will be one remaining FBS program that has never played an FCS program, and it won’t be Notre Dame.* Joe Montana’s Notre Dame will host Too Tall Jones’s Tennessee State this weekend in the Irish’s first matchup with a lower division team since the NCAA created divisions in 1978.

That in itself is a notable fact about this game. What truly adds some interest though is that Tennessee State is also Notre Dame’s first ever HBCU opponent. (Although by a long shot not their first minority-majority enrollment opponent, as we’ll get into below!) We don’t know what the process was to arrive at this particular opponent, but the fact that it’s an HBCU is cool regardless. Even cooler is that the Aristocrat of Bands, Tennessee State’s marching band and one of the most storied bands in the HBCU tradition, will travel for the game. We’re not clear on how they’ll factor into the weekend’s festivities, but whatever we get of them will be a treat.

Fun fact: Tennessee State head coach Eddie George (yes, that Eddie George) and Jerry Orbach share something in common as both have played sleazy attorney (redundant, I know) Billy Flynn in Broadway productions of Chicago. I kid you not. That may end up being the most interesting thing you learn about any of the participants in this game.

#13 Notre Dame (OFF) vs. Tennessee State

Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, September 2, 2023
Time: 3:30 PM ET
TV: NBC/Peacock
Series: First-ever meeting

Tennessee State had a four decade run of reasonable success after World War II; the last three-plus decades have been less kind as they’ve posted just 10 winning seasons since 1987. Ohio State legend Eddie George enters his third season at the helm of the Tigers having posted a 9-13 record to date, which is a marginal improvement over his predecessor’s last couple of seasons. They’re in the midst of some conference upheaval, with their Ohio Valley Conference and the Big South Conference merging for football this season to form the rather unimaginatively named Big South OVC Association. How the Tigers fare in the new arrangement remains to be seen but most likely they’ll continue to scuffle as they work through some talent issues, particularly along the offensive line. This is not 2007 Appalachian State; a winning record would be a reasonable goal for the year.

Tennessee State’s Offense

The Tigers’ offense last year was… uh… not good. They averaged just over 314 yards and 18 points per game, good for fifth and sixth respectively in the seven-team OVC. Excluding sacks they rushed for a not-terrible 4.6 yards per carry, but excluding sacks in this case is very much “other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play.” They allowed a whopping 38 sacks in eleven games. Starting QB Draylen Ellis, who returns this year, completed just 55% of his passes for 6.5 yards per attempt last year – but protection was so bad it’s hard to know how much of that was really his fault. Sophomore center Chazan Page is the sole returning starter on the line, which given how last year went might be a good thing.

Ellis has some ability to move, rushing for over 5 yards per carry last year (sacks excluded). We afforded him some benefit of the doubt above given the line issues, but in his two seasons at Austin Peay to start his career he posted a combined 53% completion rate so maybe he’s just not that good as a passer. Sophomore tailback Jalen Rouse is a solid if unspectacular runner. The receiving corps, including the tight ends, is a mixture of lightly experienced veterans, freshman, and transfers. The magnificently named Karate Brenson was the second most productive receiver on the team last year and will look to expand his role this year. Veteran Avery Williams missed all of last season with a torn ACL and should play a significant role this year. Former Auburn QB Chayil Garnett has transitioned to receiver and could offer some more athleticism at the position.

As is common for an FCS program, every position group features a number of transfers as George has tried to patch various holes in the lineup. Unfortunately very few of the transfers in this case distinguished themselves in any meaningful way at their previous stops, so these are more dice rolls than plug-and-plays. At the end of the day the talent just isn’t there, and the matchup between the Tennessee State OL and Notre Dame DL will be so one-sided that skill position talent might not matter much in the end anyway.

Tennessee State’s Defense

This is where we get to be a little nicer to the Tigers, as their 3-4 defense was respectable last season. They were second in the OVC in scoring defense, holding opponents to 20 points or fewer in seven of eleven games, second in total defense, and first in pass efficiency defense. Their rushing numbers placed them in the middle of the OVC pack, which doesn’t augur well against The Stable, as Deland McCullough likes to refer to the Irish backs.

They also have to replace quite a bit of production from last season. LB Jahsun Bryant and S Gleson Sprewell, first and third respectively in tackles last season, graduated. LB K’Vaughn Pope was between them in tackles last year and is… somewhere? that isn’t on the field for them anymore. You may remember Pope having an Antonio-Brown-style meltdown at Ohio State during a game – he was told he wasn’t going in and responded by taking off his jersey and gloves, flinging them to the stands, and heading for the tunnel. He was thrown off the team a couple of days later and transferred to Tennessee State, where as noted he was productive last season. For reasons I can’t divine, though, he seems to have either bailed on or been thrown off this team within the last couple of weeks and will once again enter the transfer portal; only a month ago he appeared on preseason first-team all-conference lists.

Nonetheless, there’s more to highlight on this side of the ball than on the other. DE Terrell Allen posted 12.0 TFLs and 4.5 sacks last year and was a first-team All-OVC selection. Opposite him is Jalen Bell, who last year for Mississippi Valley State (Jerry Rice!) recorded 10.5 TFLs and 4.5 sacks. Between them is behemoth NT Cameron Stewart, listed at 6’3″ and 380 pounds; he hasn’t been statistically productive but one would imagine he’s hard to move. LB James Green enters Carlos Huerta territory in his seventh season. He missed all of last season with injury but was the Tigers’ leading tackler in 2021 and should be an active presence again for them this season. They lost Sprewell and some others in the secondary two-deep but will return quite a bit of productivity, most notably sixth year senior SS Josh Green (56 tackles, 3 INTs, 3 PBUs, 1 blocked kick last year) and junior CB Bryce Phillips (35 tackles, 10 PBUs). Josh is James’s younger brother, if you were wondering.

Ultimately there is still of course a significant talent defense between the Tennessee State defense and Notre Dame offense, but particularly early in the game their defense could show some feistiness.

Prediction

We mentioned that this is Notre Dame’s first-ever game against an FCS/Division I-AA team, right? It’s the first time the Irish have faced what would become a lower-division team since their sixth and final matchup with Penn in 1955, although since then they’ve faced several teams that likely would’ve lost to half of FCS/Division I-AA – for example, post-death penalty SMU in 1986 and 1989, Rice in 1988, Rutgers in 1996, and FBS newbie UMass in 2015. On average in those games the Irish scored 57 points and allowed 15. That’s probably a pretty good proxy for how this game will go. Do you enjoy watching baby seals get clubbed? Well then pull your chairs up folks.

Will Sam Hartman try to get Tobias Merriweather in the end zone?

Merriweather played pretty well against Navy overall, but he did have a bad drop early on a screen (thankfully, as the blocking wasn’t there anyway) and according to some people should’ve fought through DPI to corral a very late throw from Hartman and maybe toe-tap the endline for a score. Regardless of how explainable everything to date might be, the results haven’t come yet for the immensely talented young receiver. The Irish offense down the road will be different if Merriweather is a significant threat; step 1 on the way to that is getting him some big catches to get his confidence rolling. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hartman tries to get it to him a few times.

How much time can Notre Dame get the deep reserves?

In a perfect world the 1s won’t even take the field in the second half, or if they do it’s for a series on each side of the ball. The starters coming to play and putting this game out of reach quickly and authoritatively will pay big dividends for players who are completely untested now but will be needed at some point. Steve Angeli is one snap away from playing now and could well be the 2024 starter; so far his career numbers as a passer are 1/1 for 2 yards. Jadarian Price and Jeremiyah Love could well be 1A and 1B at running back next year, and they have eight career carries between them. JD Bertrand will be gone and Jack Kiser and Marist Liufau could be gone (I don’t think they will be, but they could). Jaylen Sneed, Junior Tuihalamaka, Drayk Bowen, and Jaden Ausberry could all use run in this game. And so on.

Can everyone get out of the game healthy?

Notre Dame thankfully got out of the Navy game with what looks like one minor issue – a tweak to Gabriel Rubio’s kneed that will keep him out of this game and possibly the NC State game next week. Always a win to limit post-Navy physical issues to that extent. I don’t think it’s a shock to say the Irish won’t prove anything meaningful to anyone this week, so the most important thing for the season is to avoid the injury bug.

Keep It Rolling 

Notre Dame came into last week’s game favored by 20.5, so I don’t want to oversell it, but 42-3 is 42-3. It was as complete a team-wide performance as we’ve seen in an opener in a long time. They’re not going to earn brownie points this week but they can build on that momentum heading into the first true road game of the season in Raleigh next week.

I’ll be watching how the front seven plays against a non-option team, how the offensive line continues to gel, how the young receivers – which includes Merriweather – stake their claim for playing time, and who comes off the bench when and for how long. If it sounds like a spring game mentality, well, I think that’s a good way to look at this matchup from the Notre Dame side.

There’s no way this game should be competitive. Given the leadership of this coaching staff and these players, I’m very confident that it won’t be. Hopefully we’ll have some fun, get out of it clean, and enjoy the best halftime show in quite some time.

Tennessee State 9

Notre Dame 55

Bonus (?) Thoughts

Many Irish fans, myself included, had long crowed about Notre Dame’s place in an ever-diminishing group of teams to have never scheduled an FCS opponent. As I’ve considered it more though I’ve come around on thinking it’s another tradition-based artificial restriction – highly artificial, as we’ll get to in a second – that makes life harder than it needs to be for the program. Nobody outside our blue and gold bubble cares about claims of moral superiority. The playoff committee certainly doesn’t, as they’ve given us ample evidence that they quite literally couldn’t care less about who the 12th best team on your schedule is. So why bother?

As to the highly artificial claim… The FCS/Division IAA – we’ll consider them equivalent here because, well, they are – has been a thing since only 1978. Before then the Irish had played numerous teams that would go on to become lower-division teams eventually or that would discontinue their programs after years of moribund play. After the 1978 split Notre Dame played teams that were nominally D-IA/FBS but were also of a quality typically found in below-average FCS teams. Granted there have been massive changes between and within eras in college football that make direct comparison difficult, but even allowing for that – here are some notable lower-division-ish programs that Notre Dame coaches have faced over the years and their current status.

  • Beloit College (DIII)
  • Butler University (FCS)
  • Carnegie Mellon University (DIII)
  • Case Institute of Technology (DIII, now Case Western Reserve University)
  • Coe College (DIII)
  • Dartmouth University (FCS)
  • DePauw University (DIII, also Pete Sampson’s alma mater)
  • Detroit University (disbanded 1964)
  • Drake University (FCS)
  • Haskell Indian Nations University (NAIA)
  • Kalamazoo College (DIII)
  • Loyola University – New Orleans (disbanded 1939)
  • Morningside College (NAIA)
  • Valparaiso University (FCS)
  • St. Louis University (disbanded 1949)
  • University of Mount Union (DIII)
  • University of Pennsylvania (FCS)
  • Wabash College (DIII)

Haskell Indian Nations is the answer to the oblique reference above to a majority-minority institution – Notre Dame played them five times from 1914 to 1932. Haskell is alive and well and bills itself as “the premiere tribal university in the United States.”

Notre Dame also played D-IA/FBS Rice twice under Ara Parseghian (1973, 1974) and once under Lou Holtz (1988) – over which time Rice went 42-128-1 and would’ve been embarrassed by any number of D-IAA/FCS teams. They played post-death-penalty SMU twice, in 1986 and 1989, and outscored the Ponies 120-35.  They took on a pathetic but technically D-IA Rutgers for a one-off body bag game in 1996 – the same year that Marshall waltzed to the D-IAA title on Randy Moss’s shoulders. The Irish played UMass in 2015, just three seasons removed from their first as a full FBS member.

All of this is a long of way saying that while Tennessee State might be weaker than most and carry a label that no previous Irish opponent has, they are far from unique in Notre Dame’s all-time opponent list. Given that the playoff committee really doesn’t care whether your twelfth game is Purdue, a genuine “any given Saturday” opponent, or Tennessee State, an “only if the entire team had the fish on the flight home” opponent, there’s not much of an argument against scheduling this type of game. Especially when everyone else gets the benefit Notre Dame has denied itself (how very Catholic) and when we can do something fun with it like invite an HBCU with an awesome band.

It’s a big change on paper, sure, but after some thought… Count me in.

* It’s USC. The last school to not play an FCS opponent is USC. Blech. Their last game against an eventual lower-division/folded program was San Diego Naval Training Station in 1952; their last against an actual school was Pacific in 1945 (Pete Carroll’s alma mater, btw, and he may have played in that game).