10 Over the last 10 years, an inordinately high amount of first-time visitors — which New Mexico is — have won in their first outing at Notre Dame Stadium: UConn (2009), Tulsa (2010), South Florida (2011), Louisville (2014), Virginia Tech (2016) and Georgia (2017).
Suffice to say a loss to the Lobos would be the biggest upset ever of the Fighting Irish. The next two home games, Virginia (Sept. 28) and Bowling Green (Oct. 5), also will feature first-time visitors.
9 Losses suffered by New Mexico each of the past two seasons (3-9 both times) after posting nine wins (9-4) in 2016, which was tied for the second most ever at the school since its first football season in 1931. Only the 1982 team (10-1) had more wins. That enabled head coach Joe Morrison to take the South Carolina the job in 1983.
8 Consecutive years head coach Brian Kelly is looking to win his home opener after losing his only one in 2011 to South Florida. That longest by a Notre Dame head coach in Notre Dame Stadium is 10 by Ara Parseghian from 1964-73 before losing in 1974 to four-touchdown underdog Purdue.
7 Ranking of Notre Dame in this week’s Associated Press football poll. That is the highest the Fighting Irish have been in Kelly’s 10 seasons entering the second game of the season, surpassing the No. 8 placement last year after defeating Michigan in the opener.
6 This is the sixth time Notre Dame will play on Sept. 14, the first coming in 1985. After losing the first two it is 3-2, most recently a 31-24 fourth-quarter comeback win at Purdue in 2013.
5 Touchdowns Notre Dame is favored by (34.5-point spread) against New Mexico, a line that came down from 37.5 earlier in the week. That is the highest spread in a Notre Dame game since game 2 last year — also 34.5 versus Ball State at home. The Fighting Irish won 24-16.
This will also be the fifth different Mountain West Conference team to play Notre Dame, joining Air Force (24-6), Hawaii (3-0), Nevada (2-0) and San Diego State (1-0).
4 Notre Dame is seeking its fourth unbeaten season at home in the last eight years after achieving it in 2012, 2015 and 2018 — and the first back-to-back since 1987-89. Consider that in the 22 seasons from 1990-2011 it had only one, in 1998 (6-0) under current New Mexico head coach Bob Davie, whose health setback on Aug. 31 prevented him from making this trip.
The current 11-game winning streak at home is the third longest since the opening of Notre Dame Stadium in 1930, behind only the 28 from 1942-50 and 19 from 1987-90.
3 Teams in college football who have allowed 30 or fewer points over the last 15 games they’ve played: Notre Dame, Mississippi State and Washington. That is the longest such streak for the Irish since the 18 it had in the last six games of 2011 and the first 12 in 2012.
2 Kelly and North Carolina’s Mack Brown are the only two active coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision to have coached more than 300 games at the collegiate level. Brown in his 30th overall season is at 370 after last night’s loss to Wake Forest, while today will be Kelly’s 348th game in 29 seasons as a head coach.
1 This is the first meeting between the two schools in football, and the 146th different opponent Notre Dame will have played since starting the program in 1887. The Fighting Irish are 120-22-3 (.838) all time against first-time foes.
----
• Talk about it inside Rockne’s Roundtable
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, Blue & Gold Illustrated.
• Follow us on Twitter: @BGINews, @BGI_LouSomogyi, @BGI_CoachD and @BGI_MikeSinger
• Like us on Facebook.
