Tag: notre dame history

Who out there is ready for a tournament that will consume your life for the next three weeks?  Aren’t we usually used to that this time of year?  Since we’re all on lock down anyway, let’s have a tournament of our own —

For Notre Dame fans it was already looking like a March to forget.  The women’s basketball team had an incredibly rare off year and the hockey team saw their season end last weekend after dropping two straight in Minnesota to get eliminated from the Big Ten Tournament.  Neither was tournament bound.  Unless Notre Dame went on a miracle run and won the ACC Tournament, the men’s basketball team wasn’t going to be participating in March Madness, either.

What we have for you here at Fighting Irish Wire though is a tournament to remember some of the good and hopefully start some (mostly) friendly debates.

What is the best Notre Dame football game since 1986?

A couple of facts for this bracket and what the selection committee is thinking as we finalize the bracket before it’s Sunday evening release:

1.  It was put together by Nick Shepkowski and Jeff Feyerer.  The two used a draft type format to come up with seeds for the majority of it, aside from the very top seeds.
2. It doesn’t matter if the game had national championship implications or not, was it a great game?  It’s worth at least remembering and discussing.  There will be some of the classics you will easily recall and hopefully more than a couple that make you think “oh man, I entirely forgot about that…how in the bloody hell did the Irish win that?!?!”
3. The only real rule for this is that it had to have occurred since Lou Holtz took over (starting in 1986) and Notre Dame had to have won.  Sure, 2000 Nebraska was a thriller as was 2014 Florida State and 2005 USC.  They were losses though and I’m fine with not having to relive those for now.  Let’s just hope this Coronavirus goes away so we don’t have to start bringing up some of the painful heartbreak and analyzing it too thoroughly (let’s obviously hope Coronavirus goes away for the obvious reasons, too).

We will unveil the bracket on what is normally “Selection Sunday”.  You the Fighting Irish Wire community will then be in charge of voting for the games you think most-deserve to move on and you’ll come right to FIW to do just that.

If you’re not following us on Twitter, be sure to do so and if you’re not following our Facebook page be sure to give it a like.  We’ll post the rounds on both of those and share reminders to vote on each round of action.

Here’s the plan for voting for the games:

First round voting will start on Monday, March 16 at 9 a.m. ET and go through Wednesday, March 18 at 6 p.m ET.

Second round voting then starts Thursday, March 19 at 9 a.m. ET and goes through Sunday evening, March 22 at 6 p.m. ET.

Sweet 16 voting will then be conducted March 23 at 9 a.m. ET and go until Wednesday, March 25 at 6 p.m. ET.

Elite Eight voting will be held then from Thursday, March 26 at 9 a.m. ET and go until Sunday evening of March 29 at 6 p.m. ET.

We’ll then conduct Final Four voting starting Monday, March 30 at 9 a.m. ET and have it go through the evening of Wednesday, April 1 at 7 p.m. ET.

Championship voting will finally take place starting Thursday, April 2 at 9 a.m. ET and go through Monday night, what would have been the night of the NCAA Men’s Basketball national championship.  We’ll close voting at 11:30 p.m. ET to go right along with when “One Shining Moment” usually is hitting the air.

Check back here Sunday night to see the bracket and be sure to share it with your Notre Dame fan friends all March long.  We may not have live sports but we’ll still have plenty of fun in the coming days and weeks.

In the meantime, what games that you fear we may be forgetting need to be included on this bracket?  Get your last minute submissions in before the committee unveils the bracket Sunday night!