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Greg McElroy explains why Miami vs. Notre Dame is a Top 10 non-conference game in 2025

FaceProfileby:Thomas Goldkamp•17 hours ago
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College Football: BCS National Championship: Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly on field during game vs Alabama at Sun Life Stadium. Miami Gardens, FL 1/7/2013 CREDIT: John Biever (Photo by John Biever /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (Set Number: X155977 TK1 R1 F41 )

Heading into the 2025 season, the analysis on potential playoff teams and teams to look out for is flying left and right. And part of that conversation revolves around the top non-conference matchups.

ESPN analyst Greg McElroy spent some time on an episode of his show, the Always College Football podcast, discussing some of the top non-league games this season. He has Notre Dame and Miami as one of the best.

“We’ll go next to game No. 4, the fourth-best non-conference game of the season this year. It’s Notre Dame at Miami,” McElroy said. “”This is kind of a classic rivalry. Now people will point to it and say, ‘Well it’s not really that much of a rivalry, they don’t play that often.’ There’s a lot of tradition surrounding Notre Dame and Miami.”

Notre Dame currently leads the all-time series 18-8-1. But Miami has the more recent win in the series.

The Hurricanes won the last meeting in 2017 in dominant fashion, pulling out a 41-8 win at home. The Fighting Irish had won the previous four non-conference meetings between the two.

So why is this matchup one of McElroy’s top non-conference games? He explained.

“We’ve already talked about why I think Miami’s a real contender this year,” he said. “And anyone that watched Notre Dame last year knows that it’s going to be a great opportunity for them to repeat what they accomplished last season. Now, new quarterback under center. We’ll see exactly who that is for the Irish. I think it’s probably going to be CJ Carr. But we’ll see.”

Both quarterbacks will be breaking in a new quarterback. And the impact might just be bigger for Miami, which loses the No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick in Cam Ward.

Still, there will be a lot of pressure on whoever starts for Notre Dame in the key non-conference game. The intrigue, in part, is what makes the matchup so compelling.

“It will be his first start on the road in what should be a very hostile environment Week 1 with Miami’s preseason expectations and Notre Dame’s preseason expectations,” McElroy said. “So big test early in Week 1 for both programs with legitimate national championship aspirations this season.”