Notre Dame football returns in 95 days. Or 96. We’re not fully sure but we do know the countdown went up, not down today. ’95 Notre Dame.
Happy Wednesday, folks.
A few days have passed by without updating the countdown but just to catch you up, we’re 88 days…scratch that…
94 or 95 days away from Notre Dame football returning.
Yeah I know, we started the countdown almost two weeks ago as we reached the 100 day mark and then the announcement came that Week Zero will instead be Week One and that Notre Dame and Navy will instead meetup on Labor Day weekend in Annapolis.
So with that in mind we go back to the future in a way and end up at 95 days. If you missed 95 the first time around it was dedicated to Kyle Rudolph’s go-ahead touchdown against Michigan in 2010.
This time with 95 we will honor the 1995 Notre Dame team that went 9-3 after a stunning, season-opening loss to Northwestern, who would end up winning the Big Ten championship.
It started with the shocking defeat to a Northwestern squad who hadn’t won more than four games in a single season in 24 years previous. As awful as things appeared to be headed Notre Dame bounced back with wins over Purdue and Vanderbilt before destroying No. 13 Texas, 55-27.
The season again hit a snag when Eddie George ran wild en-route to the Heisman Trophy as No. 7 Ohio State beat up the Irish 45-26. Notre Dame would go on to win their final six regular season games which included a 38-10 win over No. 5 and eventual Rose Bowl Champion, USC.
Ron Powuls broke his arm against Navy in the second to final game of the year and No. 6 Notre Dame entered the Orange Bowl an 11 point underdog against No. 8 Florida State as leading rusher Randy Kinder was suspended for the game. It was the third straight season Notre Dame and Florida State met with the teams splitting the first two games.
Despite that, backup quarterback Tom Krug used Derrick Mayes to his advantage and had the Irish leading 26-14 with just 11 minutes to play. Danny Kanell led the Florida State comeback however as Andre Cooper snagged three scores for the Seminoles in their eventual 31-26 win.
Notre Dame finished the year 9-3 and ranked 11th in the final AP Poll in what was one heck of a roller coaster ride of a season.
