Former Purdue kicker Spencer Porath commits to Notre Dame

Notre Dame has a new kicker for 2026. And he doesn’t need to travel far to get started with the Fighting Irish.

Former Purdue kicker Spencer Porath announced his commitment to Notre Dame on Tuesday.

Porath made 15 of 17 field goal attempts as a sophomore in 2025, including a clip of 6 of 8 from 40-plus yards. He was 2 of 3 from 50-plus yards with a long of 53. For his career, he’s made 22 of 28 of his field goals for a percentage of 78.6. As far as extra points go, he’s a perfect 41 of 41.

Gold & Black beat writer Tom Dienhart called Porath going from the Boilermakers to the Irish “a big loss for Purdue,” citing immense development from his freshman season when he was a 63.6 percent field goal kicker to his sophomore season when he made 88.2 percent of his field goals.

Porath made field goals of 26, 35 and 48 yards in a 56-30 Purdue loss to Notre Dame in South Bend in September.

Field goal kicking was an immense issue for the Irish in 2025, meanwhile. Notre Dame went 5 of 9 as a team. Noah Burnette, a transfer from North Carolina, was 5 of 6, but he was oft-injured and never rounded into form as a reliably available option. In his absence, true freshman Erik Schmidt went 0 of 3 on field goals.

Extra points weren’t even a given for Notre Dame last season. The Irish missed four of them. Again, Porath has not missed one in two years at the college level. He’s got two years left to spend at Notre Dame as well.

Schmidt is still on the Irish roster. Presumably, he’ll compete with Porath this offseason — or at least push him to the point of making it impossible for the Irish to be any worse of a placekicking team in 2026 than it was in 2025. Obviously, that’s a low bar.

Porath, though, raises the bar.

Notre Dame has only had four kickers in program history match or exceed Porath’s 2025 accuracy percentage on field goals with a minimum of 15 attempts. The school record is 94.7 percent set by David Ruffer in 2010.

One of the biggest worries for the Irish had they made the College Football Playoff is what they’d do in the event of needing to hit a big kick in the postseason. That scenario came up multiple times in the 2024-25 playoff run, and Mitch Jeter answered the call.

Porath is the type of player who can answer it in 2026-27.