Notre Dame-Wisconsin Series 'Hits All The Marks'
This afternoon’s announcement of a two-game Notre Dame-Wisconsin football series in 2020-21 checked the three main boxes that Notre Dame vice president/director of athletics Jack Swarbrick seeks when assembling a schedule.
“The first part is the experience for our students to play football,” said Swarbrick today in Chicago at the announcement of the series. “The second is the pending ramifications of the game, and the third is how does it advance the university. What are the connections? What’s the story?
“I don’t know that we could have scheduled a game against an opponent that could have hit those marks more effectively than this two-game series. There are so many connections here.”
Part I is the anticipation of the two teams agreeing to play in nearby NFL venues: Oct. 3, 2020 at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, and Sept. 25, 2021 at Chicago’s Soldier Field — both Shamrock Series games for Notre Dame.
Swarbrick noted how in recent years such contests at Cowboys Stadium (2013 versus Arizona State), Yankee Stadium (2010 versus Army) or Fenway Park (2015 versus Boston College) were extremely appealing to the Fighting Irish student-athletes.
“The reaction of our students to those opportunities to play in iconic venues like that creates an extra dimension and extra excitement, and both of these will do that for us,” Swarbrick said. “The other thing about these games is in both the stadium will be split 50/50. That creates a unique atmosphere. That’s the same atmosphere you get at a national championship game.
“The energy in the stadium when you do that, both sides will be very full and there will be a very robust secondary market I’m sure. … We want to be national and we want to play in iconic venues and this helps promote both. And we wanted to go to national fan bases, and certainly Chicago is that. It hits in every dimension.”
Part II is that Wisconsin over the past 20-plus years has become a consistent Top 15-20 football program with a physical identity on both sides of the ball that was established by current athletics director Barry Alvarez while he was the head coach from 1990-2005.
In the past 12 seasons from 2005-16, the Badgers have averaged nine wins per season (108-40, .730 winning percentage) and finished in the Associated Press Top 10 four times, including No. 9 last year. Like Notre Dame men’s basketball in the ACC, it might not be considered the top team in the league, but it consistently will be among the top 5 in the 14-team Big Ten while often ranking among the top 15-20 nationally.
“As we attempt to create a body of work which makes the case for our inclusion in the college football playoff, we want to be able to have marker games against the Big 10 or against the SEC,” Swarbrick said. “We’ll always have Pac-12 or ACC markers by virtue of our scheduling agreements.”
Finally, Part III has a rebirth of the Shamrock Series in 2020-21 after a hiatus this season. NBC will broadcast the first game at Lambeau while the Big 10 will hold the rights to the second meeting in 2021.
“We will designate both as a Shamrock game for us for purposes of all the university activities that go on during the week,” Swarbrick confirmed.
Furthermore, despite not having met in football since 1964, there are vast connections between the two schools:
• Curly Lambeau, for whom Lambeau Field is named, originally began his football career at Notre Dame in 1918 under first-year head coach Knute Rockne. The founder and player-coach of the Green Bay Packers also moonlighted as the head coach of Green Bay East High — where his unbeaten 1920 team was led by Jim Crowley, one of Notre Dame’s legendary Four Horsemen from 1922-24.
• Speaking of Four Horsemen, another member of that unit was quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, who was the head coach at Wisconsin from 1936-48. His best season was 1942, when his 8-1-1 Badgers — the tie came against Frank Leahy’s Notre Dame team — finished No. 3 in the AP, the school’s second highest finish to this day. (Alvarez had three top 6 placements, with No. 4 the highest in 1999). The Badgers finished No. 2 in 1962.
• The late Ara Parseghian’s first game as Notre Dame’s head coach was a 31-7 decision in the rain at Madison — a precursor of the glory days to come in his 11 seasons with the Fighting Irish. Parseghian was only 2-6 versus Wisconsin while he was at Northwestern, and had lost his last three in a row there to the Badgers, giving extra meaning to his Notre Dame debut. A record-breaking passing attack also was unleashed when heretofore unheralded senior quarterback John Huarte passed for 270 yards en route to the Heisman Trophy, while Jack Snow caught nine passes for a single-game record 217 yards.
• Before getting hired as Wisconsin’s head coach, Alvarez coached at Notre Dame under Lou Holtz from 1987-89. He was originally hired as an outside linebackers coach, but then was promoted to coordinator his last two seasons and helped orchestrate a Notre Dame school record 23-game winning streak and the 1988 national title.
• Third-year Badgers head coach Paul Chryst’s brother Rick Chryst is a 1983 Notre Dame graduate who started for the baseball team, was a roommate of All-American point guard John Paxson and a former commissioner of the Mid-American Conference.
Shortly after becoming Notre Dame’s AD in 2008, Swarbrick said Alvarez reached out to him about the possibility of a future series, but timing often was an issue. Cooperation also was needed from Packers president and Chief Executive Officer Mark Murphy and General Superintendent and CEO of the Chicago Park District Mike Kelly.
“When we sat down and tried to take a strategic view of our schedule, we asked ourselves, ‘What venues do we most want to get to?’” Swarbrick recalled. “And at the top of that list was Lambeau. That happened about 18 months ago. We were engaged in that process and we made a call. Barry was great, Mark was great, and the notion all along was to pair it with Chicago. It just came together.”
----
• 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,
@BGI_MattJones, @BGI_DMcKinney and @BGI_CoreyBodden.
• Like us on Facebook