Notre Dame schedules football series with Georgia

Schools from the Big Ten, Pac-12, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12 are among the foes that have peppered Notre Dame's regular-season football schedules in recent years.

The Southeastern Conference? Not since the 2005 season, when Charlie Weis' first Irish team routed Tennessee, have the Irish played a regular-season game against a team from the SEC, the measuring stick in college football.

That will change in 2017 following Wednesday’s announcement that Notre Dame will host Georgia on Sept. 9, 2017 with a return trip to Athens, Ga., on Sept. 21, 2019.

With college football moving to a playoff system this season, adding an SEC school to the schedule certainly can't hurt, particularly picking up a foe from a conference whose schools produced seven consecutive BCS national champions.

"I think quality and strength of schedule become more and more critical," said Mike Mayock, who serves as an analyst on NBC's broadcast of Notre Dame games. "At the end of the day the SEC is still the standard that all conferences are judged by. I just think the one glaring omission (on Notre Dame's schedule) has been an SEC team. I'm all for this Georgia series."

The series likely will affect Notre Dame's four-game scheduled series with Texas. The Irish are scheduled to host the Longhorns in 2015 and 2020 with games in Austin in 2016 and 2019. With a commitment to play five games each season against ACC teams, along with annual series with USC, Stanford and Navy and the annual off-site Shamrock Series game, bringing Georgia into the window where the Irish are scheduled to play Texas is a tight fit.

Notre Dame senior associate athletic director for media and broadcast relations John Heisler said Wednesday night that the school has let Texas officials know that it would like to move the 2019 and 2020 games.

"We're hopeful that we can move those games somewhere down the road into the next decade," Heisler said. "We're trying to create as much variety as we possibly can and let our fans see as many teams as they can."

The series with Georgia had been rumored for months.

“As our football schedules evolved with the start of our Atlantic Coast Conference competition in 2014, we had future games slated with top-drawer opponents in virtually all the major conferences,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said in a statement. “One exception was the Southeastern Conference, so we are pleased now to be able to check that box. These will be two contests that will have great national appeal, in part because our only previous matchup came in a bowl game.”

“These are two very attractive football games against a Georgia program that also has impressive history and tradition. Mark Richt has done an excellent job keeping that program at the forefront, both in the SEC and nationally,” Brian Kelly said in the statement.

The 2017 game will be the first regular-season meeting between the schools, with the only previous meeting coming in the 1981 Sugar Bowl. Georgia, behind freshman running back Herschel Walker, won 17-10 to win the national championship.

The 2019 game in Athens offers Kelly and his staff an opportunity to play in a fertile recruiting area. CBS Sports Network recruiting analyst Tom Lemming termed Atlanta one of the five most talented cities in the country. Notre Dame in recent years has lured Atlanta-area stars Stephon Tuitt, TJ Jones and Darius Walker to South Bend.

"I think it's a tremendous move because there's an enormous amount of talent there," Lemming said.

Georgia in recent years has excelled under Richt, winning 30 games over the last three years. The Bulldogs also enjoyed a recent run in which they won at least 10 games in seven of 10 seasons.

Notre Dame is picking up not just an SEC opponent, but a quality SEC opponent.

"To me," Mayock said, "that's what's important."

Bob Wieneke: BWieneke@SBTinfo.com