because every conference has a "cycle" to define how long it takes for a team to play every other team in the conference home and away at least 1 time in order to "complete the cycle." Plus, some OOC games aren't scheduled that far in advance. For example, VT's games against USC and Boise State at FedEx were scheduled on short notice. The year Michigan cancelled its home-home series against VT (in the same year the first game was going to be played), Michigan's replacement opponent that year was a home game against Arkansas State. As a result, VT was forced to agree (on short notice) to agree to a home-home series with Middle Tennessee as a replacement. It is worth mentioning that year turned out to be the COVID year so VT never ended up playing at Middle Tennessee. Also, the issue has nothing to do with whether a network will accommodate a late season OOC game against Notre Dame or not. The issue is a conference has a certain number of weeks, usually 13 or 14 depending on the calendar, for every team to play the defined number of conference games. Historically the first couple weeks of the season and the final week of the regular season has been reserved for OOC games. As a result, that can reduce the window on when the conference games can be played even if the conference adopts the same scheduling policy as the SEC where at least 1 conference game is scheduled every week of the regular season. Whenever a team is allowed to play Notre Dame in Weeks 6-12 or 13 (in a 14 week regular season), then that means 1 of 2 things has to happen: 1. Another team in the conference plays an OOC game that same week; or 2. That same team has to make that week their Bye Week. For seasons where teams only get 1 Bye Week, the October games are a nothingburger because that is when teams often take their Bye Week to break up the season. The other main reason a team places its Bye Week where it does is because they are scheduled to play their next game on a Thursday. They don't want to be placed in a situation where they play on Saturday and then play their next game 5 days later on the following Thursday (if it can be helped). However, the November games are a difficult story because potential OOC opponents are a lot fewer even if you include DI-FCS and most coaches don't want to wait to take their Bye Week that late in the regular season for a number of reasons. If Notre Dame wants to play Clemson in Week 11, Clemson is scheduled to play 9 conference games this year, Clemson's 9th conference game is at UVA, and Week 11 is the only week the game can be played in because the teams have different Bye Weeks and the other games (OOC and conference) can't be moved around to move the Clemson-UVA game to a different week, then do you truly believe the ACC would still allow Clemson to play Notre Dame? If you believe so, then what does that mean for UVA who is only scheduled to play 8 conference games this year? My point is the same logic would still apply to a conference where every team plays the same number of conference games (8, 9, or even 10). If the scheduled conference game can't be moved to another date to accommodate the Notre Dame game, then the conference game will always trump an OOC game regardless whether it is Notre Dame or someone else.