[More Cowbell]

Playing Notre Dame is a good idea. You don't want to overload the schedule with too many elite (top 10) level teams, but also want to have some games that will look good on your resume at the end of the year. ND fits that bill.

Incidentally, I have seen a couple people on here mention Syracuse as a possibility for the SEC/Big East challenge, which is also a rumor that I saw on KSR a while back. But by my figuring, I don't know if that is possible. When the two conferences signed a 4-year deal back in 2007, my understanding was that over the course of the 16 games (4 games/yr), each Big East team would participate once, and each SEC team would participate at least once. Now, UK can certainly play in it again this year, as Arkansas is the only SEC team yet to participate. But Syracuse was just in it this past year, which would seem to eliminate them as a candidate for the 2010 challenge. FYI, the Big East teams yet to participate are ND, Pitt, Rutgers, and Seton Hall. If these are the only choices, then obviously the marquee matchup would be UK-Pitt.