Sources: Temple to announce football series with Notre Dame

Temple will announce today that its football team has scheduled what is believed to be a three-game series with Notre Dame, sources familiar with the situation have told the Daily News.

One of those games will be held in Philadelphia, although the sources weren't sure of the timetable for either that or the ones in South Bend, Ind. Notre Dame's schedules for the next two seasons are already set, so the earliest it could start is 2013.

A Temple spokesperson said there would be no official comment until today.

The last time the Fighting Irish played here was 1993, when they beat Navy at Veterans Stadium, 58-27.

There will be a news conference today at 3 o'clock to announce the agreement.

The Owls already have a similar arrangement with Penn State, which will visit Lincoln Financial Field on Sept. 17. The Nittany Lions were last here in 2007. Not shockingly, it was a sellout. The Notre Dame date will be as well. And even if a large portion of the crowd figures to again be rooting for the away team, it's still a major coup for a program that usually draws in the mid- to high-teens. And the games at Notre Dame will be on national television, since the Irish have their own network for home games. The one in South Philly should at least be shown regionally. You can't put a value on that kind of exposure.

This deal has been making the rounds for some time. Now it's about to become reality.

Notre Dame, which has made multiple appearances at the Meadowlands and in Baltimore, has never played Temple.

The Irish hosted Western Michigan last October. It was the first time they had played a team that's now in the Mid-American Conference since 1920. *