Opponent Watch: 8-Clap Edition

Welcome back, college football. Each week in this space, we examine two things: Notre Dame’s strength of schedule (beginning next week), and who upcoming Irish opponents are facing. For those of who want to scout future opponents, I’ll give you my recommendation for who to watch when you’re not watching Notre Dame Football.

Who To Watch

Virginia at UCLA (Sat 3:30pm ET Fox)

Virginia's Scott Stadium (photo: virginiasports.com)

Virginia’s [Great] Scott Stadium
(photo: virginiasports.com)

Saturday primetime is a very long time to wait for ND Football. That’ll be on NBC, but ESPN will be broadcasting Sportscenter from in front of Touchdown Jesus (presumably) on Saturday, and CBS (who owns Showtime) will be compiling a weekly show during the season. We’re doing ourselves a disservice by not scheduling a 13th game (end sarcasm).

Back to the topic at hand: the Virginia Cavaliers ride westward to Pasadena to open their 2015 season with a duel against UCLA. According to many national polls, the home team is brewing talent at a similar level to Notre Dame, and will bear the responsibility of breaking in a new quarterback and a new coordinator. If you want to get the thrust of what ND will need to parry next week, you couldn’t do much better than to sabre this strong week one matchup.