On Wednesday, Notre Dame and NBC announced a new streaming docuseries following the 2024 Fighting Irish football team. The dates they selected suggest the duo is expecting big things from the Fighting Irish this year, with every episode scheduled to air coincidentally right around the major College Football Playoff dates.
The docuseries, set to premiere on August 29 on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock, will follow the Fighting Irish throughout fall camp and the 2024 season, giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at Marcus Freeman’s third season as head coach.
In all, seven episodes will be streamed on Peacock starting with the first two on August 29 just two days before the Irish open the 2024 season in College Station against Texas A&M. That date was an obvious one, the others align with key milestones of the College Football Playoff.
Episodes 3 and 4 will be available on Thursday, December 5, a few days before the announcement of the college football playoff seedings.
Episodes 5 and 6 will be available on Thursday, December 19, which happens to be right before the weekend of the first round of College Football Playoff games.
The finale, episode 7, will be available on Thursday, January 16. That just so happens to be the Thursday before the National Championship game.
Presumptuous? Perhaps. It also shows that Notre Dame and NBC are not afraid of big expectations for this year’s team. You don’t release a docuseries following your team with the release dates they selected without being very confident about your capabilities. Well, either very confident or overly delusional since that last episode will be sparse for content if the Irish miss the playoffs altogether.
There is reason for Notre Dame and NBC to be confident with the new 12-team playoff and a lighter-than-normal schedule this year, though week one at Kyle Field looms very large for the Irish. A win would set them up for a nice run, with the Irish not set to face another team ranked in the preseason top 25 for over two months after. A loss, however, and the Irish will be playing catchup from the beginning of the season.
If nothing else, it’s exciting to see NBC finally invest some money into its Notre Dame football product after years of doing the bare minimum. The trailer alone might be one of the best pieces of content that NBC has produced related to Notre Dame football in years.
Who knows, maybe the Irish will go on a run this year, and when the Seminoles come to town in November, there will be another epic clash between the two. We’ll even get another “Just Around the Corner on Main St” type intro as we did in 1993 for the Game of the Century, back when NBC was routinely investing in the production value of Notre Dame broadcasts.
