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Notre Dame & Past Postponements

For the third time in just more than 100 years, a Notre Dame football game has been postponed.

On Tuesday afternoon, the University of Notre Dame announced that this Saturday’s clash at Wake Forest would not be played because of a rash of new COVID-19 cases from Monday’s testing of the Fighting Irish football team. Seven positives cases out of 94 tests brought the total to 13 players in isolation (at least a 10-day wait) and 10 more in quarantine (at least 14 days).

Notre Dame’s Golden Dome
This weekend marks the third time since 1919 a Fighting Irish football game had to be postponed. (UND.edu)
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Per the university, during last Saturday’s 52-0 win versus South Florida 10 players were out because of COVID-19 protocols. The current 23 figure could still swell because identifying close contacts is still ongoing. All football activities have been paused this week, including speaking with the media.

The other two aforementioned postponements or cancellations came during two catastrophes in United States history:

SEPTEMBER 2001

Not since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States has the sports landscape been so altered. Back then, though, it resulted in the cancellation of Division I-A college and NFL games for only that week, but in many cases they would be rescheduled later.

There were still three Division I-AA games played that weekend, though, one of them with nearby Valparaiso University.

Following Notre Dame's opening game defeat at Nebraska on Sept. 8, it was business as usual that Monday with player and coaches interviews after practice near the tunnel on the north end of Notre Dame Stadium.

The next day, 2,977 perished in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Somerset County, Pa. Football practice that Tuesday was cancelled, and ultimately so was Notre Dame’s game that Saturday at Purdue.

The decision not to play also followed a Big East Conference (where Notre Dame competed in 20 sports) announcement to postpone all conference competition.

“We believe the horrific developments Tuesday warrant a national period of bereavement and a moratorium as far as athletics are concerned,” Notre Dame director of athletics Kevin White summarized.

Valparaiso president Dr. William Steinbrecher had a different take.

“Some say you shouldn't be playing football when they are still taking bodies out,'' Steinbrecher told The New York Times, referring to the recovery efforts. ''I see that cliché ‘out of respect for.’ Well, we have a great deal of respect. But, also, life must go on. It is good for people to have some normalcy in their lives.”

Ultimately, Notre Dame and Purdue agreed to reschedule their game to Dec. 1 in West Lafayette, a 24-18 Irish victory to finish 5-6.

Regardless, fifth-year Fighting Irish head coach Bob Davie was fired the next morning by White. Following the opening game defeat to Nebraska, the Irish lost at home to Michigan State (17-10) and then at Texas A&M (24-3) — making them the first Notre Dame team to start a season 0-3.

NOVEMBER 1963

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Friday Nov. 22, 1963 led to Notre Dame cancelling its football game the next day at Iowa (it was never rescheduled).

Still, 2-6 Notre Dame under interim coach Hugh Devore departed after that Friday practice to Iowa City. Four other Big Ten games scheduled for that Saturday were postponed, as were AFL games.

However, approximately a dozen major college football games were played on Saturday — most notably Nebraska defeating Oklahoma to capture the Big 8 title and go to the Orange Bowl — and the NFL also had its kickoffs on Sunday.

On Friday night while the Notre Dame players were in the hotel, the two athletics directors, Notre Dame’s EdMoose” Krause and Iowa’s Forest Evashevski, told reporters the game would be played.

Shortly after midnight, that plan was vetoed by Notre Dame president Rev. Theodore Hesburgh C.S.C., who was that day involved in meetings with the National Science Board in Boulder, Colo.

“What amazed me is that on Friday people actually expected us to play a football game the next day,” Hesburgh recalled in a 1983 interview, on the 20th anniversary of the assassination. “I said, ‘There will be no game.’ ”

For Iowa, it was supposed to be the season finale while honoring the senior players in their final home game. But the campaign ended then and there with a 3-3-2 record. Notre Dame offered to return to play Iowa on Dec. 7, but Iowa replied “to extend the season two additional weeks would interfere too much with class work and other university activities.”

Meanwhile, Notre Dame still had a Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 28) game remaining at New York City’s Yankee Stadium versus Syracuse. Despite wearing their green jerseys for that one, Notre Dame lost 14-7 to finish 2-7.

In its end-of-season review, Notre Dame’s student magazine, Scholastic, summarized the frustration that saw the football operation from 1956-63 tally a 34-45 record.

“The university administration has open to it three possible courses of action: 1) continue to play big-time football, assuming that athletic excellence is indeed compatible with academic excellence; 2) play a schedule restricted to schools of comparable academic standing; or 3) rather than continue losing, and rather than further sully this school’s once lustrous athletic reputation, discontinue football entirely.”

Note: During World War II the Notre Dame-USC series was not played from 1942-45 while travel restrictions were enforced nationally. The 1942 Rose Bowl was shifted from Pasadena, Calif., to Duke’s campus in Durham, N.C., because of fears about more attacks on the West Coast by the Japanese after doing so at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Just more than 100 years ago, 1918, the Spanish Influenza epidemic that struck the world had the most profound impact on the nation when it came to sports, including an abbreviated Notre Dame football season.

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