Michigan-Notre Dame on Hiatus

From, weirdly, somewhere in Alabama:

White said the Fighting Irish will take a short break from their Big 10 rivals in the future, replacing Michigan with Oklahoma for a two-year period, then facing Arizona State instead of Michigan State for two years.

Via Mark Snyder. From the tone of Press-Register article it sounds like this is more Notre Dame's choice than Michigan's. The Irish have signed a deal with the Big East that requires them to play three BE teams a year, which sort of crams things up when you're also playing Purdue, Michigan State, Michigan, Navy, and USC every year and are trying to get seven home games a year, which requires the importation of service academies and the like. Michigan is likely to sign up a big name in Notre Dame's stead -- at least they'd better -- but this makes it highly unlikely we accidentally schedule ourselves into two interesting games in either of those years given the current climate of college football. Which sucks.