An extended stay in San Diego during Thanksgiving week would’ve been nice, but a similar stretch in Las Vegas was necessary for the Notre Dame men’s basketball team.
The Irish had to do this deal. Given where college basketball, where college athletics is headed, Notre Dame had no choice. When a multi-team event (MTE) start-up promises to drop a cool million dollars into your program’s Name Image and Likeness fund just for you to play, with a promise to do it again in 2025, you have no choice. You play.
When someone pays YOU to play in a November tournament, you play. When your players have a chance to make some NIL scratch during that week in Vegas, you play.
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Even if you were supposed to play somewhere else, you go play. Even if you might, at least in June, be overextended in Vegas, you go play.
On Wednesday, Notre Dame kind of/sort of announced (officially, after weeks of whispers) that it would play in the inaugural Players Era Festival, an eight team MTE at the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena (capacity 17,000) over three days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday) of Thanksgiving week. It also released the rest of its non-conference schedule (see below).
In Vegas, Notre Dame will be in a four-team pod that includes Rutgers (remember them?), Alabama and Houston. The other four-team pod is Creighton, Oregon, Texas A&M and San Diego State. Each pod will play three games against the other three teams − Notre Dame faces Rutgers on Tuesday, November 26 at 10:30 p.m., eastern time, Houston on Wednesday, November 27 at 12:30 a.m. eastern time (no kidding) and Alabama on Saturday, November 30 at 1 p.m. eastern time.
In a way, the inclusion of Notre Dame legitimizes this tournament. The PEF may need Notre Dame as much as Notre Dame needs the PEF payout. Seriously. It’s like, wait, if Notre Dame is involved, it must be good for the game. Can you say that about any of the other seven teams?
Notre Dame and Rutgers are the only teams in the PEF field that did not participate in the 2024 NCAA tournament. The last times the teams met — in the 2022 First Four at University of Dayton Arena — Notre Dame won 89-87 in a memorable double-overtime game.
That win sent Notre Dame on to the first round of the NCAA tournament in, ironically, San Diego, a place the Irish were seemingly ticketed for over a year to return to over Thanksgiving week.
Notre Dame’s original MTE plan, before the Players Era Festival called with their cash and a promise to play in this year’s tournament and a spot in the 2025 field, was for Notre Dame to take part in the 2024 Rady’s Children’s Hospital Invitational. That field also included Arkansas (pre-Cal hiring), Brigham Young and Purdue, coached by Matt Painter, a mentor to second-year Irish coach Micah Shrewsberry.
That tournament sold a lot of tickets with the expectation of Notre Dame fans attending the two games — on Thanksgiving and Black Friday —before continuing up the coast for that weekend’s football game between Notre Dame and USC in Los Angeles.
Notre Dame seemed set for San Diego until a better offer — a Godfather type of offer — came along. It’s one the Irish couldn’t refuse. Not because of the field, but because of the funds.
Here's a million bucks, with a million more coming next year. And here are some other ways some of your players can make money out there in the desert. So, it’s hello Vegas and see ya San Diego. Arkansas also has since bounced from San Diego. Mississippi and North Carolina State took those two spots.
Notre Dame isn’t necessarily cash strapped when it comes to NIL (basically, the paying of players to, well, play). Sophom*ore guard Markus Burton will make money. Junior power forward Kebba Njie will make money. Graduate transfer Matt Allocco will make money. Everyone on the Irish roster will make something this season.
When you have a chance to deposit more money for the future, you take that chance. You jump at that chance. You run to that chance. Even before Notre Dame plays Rutgers and whatever teams/games or wins/losses might follow, the trip is a success.
That’s college basketball, that’s college athletics, in 2024.
This will be Notre Dame’s second visit to Las Vegas since 2021. The groundwork for that 2022 NCAA tournament team was laid in November in Vegas at the Maui Jim Maui Classic (moved because of COVID-19 issues in Hawaii). Notre Dame lost to Saint Mary’s and to Texas A&M (hello, again, Buzz!) and beat host Chaminade.
In March, it beat former Big East colleague Rutgers for the fourth straight time and fifth time in the last six meetings in a game that featured 12 ties and 17 lead changes where neither team led by more than eight. It may have arguably been the best game of the 2022 NCAA tournament.
Notre Dame then took a reverse red-eye to San Diego, landing around 4 a.m. Pacific time. It was the only time in former head coach Mike Brey’s tenure at Notre Dame that he held two press conferences at two different NCAA sites — one in Southwest Ohio, one in Southern California — on the same day.
Like Notre Dame (13-20; 7-13), Rutgers finished with losing records last season — 15-17; 7-13. Unlike Notre Dame, Rutgers is tucked inside a handful of early Top 25 rankings for the start of the 2024-25 season. That’s thanks to a pair of incoming freshmen considered Top 10 — and maybe Top Five — picks in the 2025 NBA draft in small forward Ace Bailey and guard Dylan Harper, whose older brother Ron’s college career ended that night at UD Arena against Notre Dame.
Notre Dame is headed for the desert, where a nice payout awaits. Just stay away from the slots. And the tables. And, really, everything else but basketball.
☘ NOTRE DAME NON-CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
☘ NOVEMBER
6 STONEHILL; 11 BUFFALO; 16 At Georgetown; 19 NORTH DAKOTA; 22 ELON; 26-30 PLAYERS ERA FESTIVAL (Las Vegas). 26 vs. Rutgers (10:30 p.m. eastern time); 27 Houston (12:30 a.m., eastern time); 30 vs. Alabama (1 p.m. eastern time).
☘ DECEMBER
3 At Georgia (SEC/ACC Challenge); 11 DARTMOUTH; 22 LEMOYNE
ACC Home: Boston College, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, Cal, Stanford, SMU, Pitt, UNC, Virginia Tech and Louisville
ACC Away: Boston College, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, FSU, Miami, Clemson, NC State, Wake Forest, Duke, Virginia
Note: Final 2024-25 schedule expected to be released by ACC in mid-September
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on Twitter: @tnoieNDI
