New generation of disdain: Gen Z discovering joy of hating Notre Dame | Opinion

Would you look at that, the inevitable has arrived and transcended time. Old is new again.  

Notre Dame, just by being Notre Dame, has birthed a new generation of hate. 

If there truly is a fine line between envy and jealousy and you make me want to puke, Gen Z college football fans are quickly and painfully figuring out what Millennials, Gen X and Boomers have known all along. 

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There are different rules for Notre Dame because no one — not Ohio State, not Texas, not Alabama, not even the entire big, bad SEC — moves the needle quite like the Irish.

Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s nothing else like ’em. 

But this new generation of hate doesn’t care about the minutiae of the how and why, especially while its visual quickly turns visceral. They see, they hate.

They don’t care about what went into favorable access negotiated with the College Football Playoff. Don’t care about television advertising dollars or Nielsen ratings or how just the whiff of Notre Dame changes every fall Saturday. 

They’re visual and they see two things: Notre Dame doesn’t play in the SEC or Big Ten and face the best competition in college football, and Notre Dame essentially gets a free ride to the big party at the end of the season.

They see a Notre Dame independent schedule that begins with eight body bags before Miami shows up in South Bend on Nov. 7. A schedule that includes the four worst teams from the ACC in 2025 (North Carolina, Stanford, Boston College and Syracuse), and eight home or neutral-site games. 

And, don’t kid yourself, those neutral-site games are Notre Dame home games for the fanatical hoard of Domers that follow. 

They see the unveiling of the preseason US LBM Coaches Poll earlier this week, and see Notre Dame planted at No. 5 and are forced to accept the reality that its path to the playoff is a layup line. 

They see an Ohio State schedule that from the middle of October until Thanksgiving weekend includes games at Indiana and USC, and Oregon and Michigan at home — that’s four Top 16 teams in the preseason poll. 

An Ohio State schedule that also includes a September nonconference game at No. 4 Texas, and an Illinois team that — look it up, I’m not kidding — won 19 games over the past two seasons.

They see every SEC schedule — pick a team, any team — and can come to only one reasonable conclusion: Notre Dame hate.

Welcome to the club, younglings. Check your jealousy, I mean envy, at the door.

Imagine having annual “rivalries” with Stanford and Navy, and then ending an annual rivalry with Michigan more than a decade ago because of a “deal” with the middling ACC that gives you nearly half of your schedule every season. 

Imagine haggling with Southern California over one of the top three rivalries in the sport, and then ending it — before deciding to resume it four years later. 

Gen Z doesn’t care about Notre Dame’s ability to dictate when and where it will play on national television, and how with its NBC media rights deal, earns as much annually as SEC and Big Ten teams. Or that with a deep CFP run, makes more than SEC and Big Ten teams.

In other words, we don’t need your stinking conference. We don’t need to play in an elite conference where every week is a grind, and everyone knows your personnel year after year and every road game is a 50-50 nightmare.

Where Indiana and Vanderbilt and Ole Miss — or any other former lovable loser — can hire the right coach, throw hundreds of millions at a program and rise to the elite of the game.

And you’ve got to deal with them.       

Imagine Ohio State or Alabama or Georgia annually playing five ACC games (six this fall), Navy, Rice and a rotation of Purdue and Michigan State — and still receiving a deal of deals that stipulates a ranking within the Top 12 by the CFP selection committee is an automatic entry to the party.    

Or playing six ACC teams last season (and Navy, Purdue and Boise State), and losing your two toughest games (Miami and Texas A&M) — and whining about not being selected to the CFP. 

Listen to your dad, Gen Z. Or his dad, or his dad’s dad.

Envy or jealousy, it all ends the same way. 

A new generation of hate. 

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New generation of disdain: Gen Z discovering joy of hating Notre Dame | Opinion