Notre Dame and the SEC might finally square off in the regular season.
The Fighting Irish are exploring the prospect of playing Georgia in the future, though the dates remain to be determined, senior associate athletic director John Heisler told ESPN.com. CBSSports.com's Jeremy Fowler reported earlier Tuesday that the schools are working to finalize a home-and-home series for 2018-19.
Notre Dame's last two games against SEC schools came in postseason play, with Alabama beating the Irish in the Discover BCS National Championship after the 2012 season and LSU topping them in the Nokia Sugar Bowl after the 2006 campaign.
Notre Dame has not played an SEC school in the regular season since it beat Tennessee at home in 2005, the second of a home-and-home series between those programs.
Scheduling matters surrounding Notre Dame -- always a storyline, given its independent status -- became further complicated in 2012, when the school agreed to play five ACC schools per season in 2014 while placing all of its other sports in the league as full-time members. With that agreement, plus three annual rivalry games that the Irish have no intention of ending (Navy, Stanford and USC), the program's schedule has seen several casualties lately, most notably Michigan, whose trip to South Bend, Ind., on Sept. 6 will mark the last scheduled meeting between the storied programs.
In December, Notre Dame announced its full schedules for the 2014-16 seasons, so any future series could not be scheduled before 2017.
It comes as little surprise that Georgia is the SEC school the Irish are looking into scheduling, as the Bulldogs had been mentioned in previous discussions about scheduling SEC opponents. Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly has spoken about the possibility of Georgia before, and Bulldogs athletic director Greg McGarity told CBSSports.com last year that a home-and-home with the Irish would be "very intriguing."
