And the hits keep coming for the 2020 college football season from the coronavirus pandemic.
With the Big Ten’s announcement this afternoon (July 9), first reported on ESPN, that it will play solely a 10-game conference schedule and eliminate all non-conference matchups, the Notre Dame-Wisconsin game scheduled at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field Oct. 3 has been eliminated.
The highly anticipated matchup on the fabled tundra would have been the first between the two schools since 1964, when first-year head coach Ara Parseghian’s Fighting Irish defeated Wisconsin 31-7 in the season opener Sept. 26 at Madison, Wis., to begin a renaissance in Notre Dame football.
The two schools are still scheduled to meet on Sept. 25, 2021 at Chicago’s Soldier Field, and Notre Dame vice president and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick tweeted out the following on Thursday evening: “We look forward to playing at Soldier Field in 2021, and Barry [Alvarez] and I are committed to scheduling a game at Lambeau Field in the future.”
Alvarez, Notre Dame's defensive coordinator during the program's school-record 23-game winning streak in 1988-89 before becoming the head coach at Wisconsin, is the Badgers’ athletics director.
Consequently, numerous other marquee Big Ten non-conference matchups have been scrapped, including Michigan at Washington Sept. 5 and Ohio State at Oregon Sept. 12.
This already is the second schedule switch for the Irish this season. The season opener versus Navy Aug. 29 in Dublin, Ireland, has been rescheduled for Sept. 5 or 6 in Annapolis, Md., although Swarbrick indicated today to ESPN’s Heather Dinich that college football opening on Sept. 5 appears to be “less likely.”
There also have been stirrings that the ACC and Pac-12 likewise could have a “conference only” football slate (see more later tonight on Blueandgold.com). The ACC already announced today that all fall Olympic sports (soccer, volleyball, cross country, etc.), which usually begin in August, will be delayed until at least Sept. 1.
As a partial football member of the ACC, and full time in other sports with the exception of hockey, Notre Dame might be expected to be included with six ACC games already on the football schedule.
Chronologically, they are: versus Wake Forest at Charlotte (Sept. 26), at Pitt (Oct. 17), Duke at home (Oct. 31), Clemson at home (Nov. 7), Georgia Tech (Nov. 14) in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium and Louisville at home (Nov. 21).
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