Vanderbilt has informed Northwestern that it is cancelling the schools’ football series in 2013 and 2014, the Chicago Tribune reported this afternoon.

The games were scheduled to take place Sept. 13, 2013, in Nashville and Sept. 14, 2014, in Evanston. According to the Tribune, Vanderbilt did not notify NU before sending a letter today about calling off the future match-ups.

The move comes on the same day the Southeastern Conference announced its schedule for the 2013 season. The schedule has Vanderbilt playing South Carolina on the same day NU was supposed to play the Commodores, but no effort was made to move the date, the Tribune reported.

The Wildcats must now scramble to find a fourth non-conference opponent for the 2013 and 2014 season. At the moment, NU is scheduled to face California, Syracuse and Maine in 2013 and California, Western Illinois and Notre Dame in 2014. The lost games also leave large gaps in the NU schedule, including a two-week period at the beginning of September 2014 during which the Cats have no game planned.

Coach Pat Fitzgerald has said he likes to play academically comparable schools in the non-conference slate, but no official plan for replacing the games has been announced.

Wildcat fans have pointed out that North Carolina has the same two dates open in 2013 and 2014. Tar Heels athletic director Bubba Cunningham and NU athletic director Jim Phillips spent three years together at Notre Dame, but no official talks have actually taken place between the two teams.

— Josh Walfish