It wasn't too long ago that Nick Saban publicly stated that he wanted the Crimson Tide to play Notre Dame. Fighting Irish associate athletic director John Heisler quickly replied saying that Notre Dame doesn't have space on their schedule given a new contract with the Big East to play three teams from that conference every year. Then there is their long standing games against Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, and the U.S. Coast Guard Thursday Night League Co-Ed Flag Football Team.
ND blogger OC Domer suggests that Notre Dame use one of the dates they recently scheduled at the Citrus Bowl (2011 & 2014) to take on Alabama. There would be need to be some major issues addressed though for this to work.
OC Domer is on the right track here, but doesn't take it quite far enough:
Give up a little revenue? There is no way Alabama is going into a one off game for an appearance fee, even if it is against Notre Dame.
As appealing as the idea of playing ND in one of these open spots is, it is largely unworkable though because we already have out of conference road games in 2011 (at Penn State) and 2014 (at Georgia Tech) and I don't see us playing six road games in a year. I think only playing four road games a year is too little, but playing six is way too much. The only way the 2011 or 2014 dates could even conceivably work would be to do a 50/50 revenue split (which would also include splitting the tickets evenly) since that would leave us with only six home games.