Tag: South Bend

‘College GameDay’ coming to Notre Dame for College Football Playoff

Get ready to reserve your place in the crowd.

ESPN and ABC will broadcast the first-round College Football Playoff game between Notre Dame and Indiana. And “College GameDay” wants to be in South Bend before it kicks off.

The popular college football program has announced that Notre Dame will be one of two stops it will make during that weekend. It also will be at Ohio State before it plays Tennessee the following day.

This will be the 37th time the Irish have been featured on “College GameDay” and the second time this season after they were featured ahead of their season-opening victory over Texas A&M. They currently have an unfortunate 16-20 all-time record in those games so far.

“College GameDay” last came to South Bend a season ago. That was before the Irish infamously had only 10 men on the field on the play that caused them to lose in gut-wrenching fashion to Ohio State. Hopefully, the Irish fans who gather on the Library Lawn this time around will be a lot happier after this upcoming appearance.

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FIW Exclusive: Interview with 2026 Notre Dame commit Sullivan Garvin

We got the inside scoop on the Irish’s latest commit.

Notre Dame now has five commits in its 2026 recruiting class. The newest is three-star interior offensive lineman [autotag]Sullivan Garvin[/autotag] from Allegan, Michigan, which is little more than an hour and a half’s drive from South Bend. Garvin made his announcement one day after National Signing Day for the 2025 class.

Although Garvin received offers from other programs after the Irish presented him with theirs Sept. 28, there was no doubt in his mind about where he wanted to go. So [autotag]Joe Rudolph[/autotag] has his first commit in this particular recruiting class.

Being the Irish’s latest commit, Garvin made the interview rounds in the hours after announcing his decision. Fighting Irish Wire was lucky to be one of the outlets to be granted an interview with him. This was made possible after communication with Tracy Garvin, his mother who took notice of us on social media when we reported on his offer from the Irish.

Here’s what Garvin had to tell us:

Our thanks to the Garvins for their time and effort with this, and we hope the younger Garvin has a fruitful career with the Irish.

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Photos of Notre Dame football’s victory over USC in annual rivalry game

What image will you remember most from this game?

Notre Dame is in the College Football Playoff after closing the regular season with a 49-35 victory over USC. It’s great whenever the Irish defeat the Trojans, especially on the road, but this one carried extra meaning for the aforementioned reason. Historically, the Irish have needed this win a bunch of times to determine their postseason fate, and they answered the call again.

Now, the Irish play the waiting game as to where they’ll be playing their first playoff game and who. It’s almost if not completely certain that they’ll be opening at Notre Dame Stadium, so fans undoubtedly are making their travel plans for South Bend for that weekend if they haven’t already. Who would have thought that was possible after the loss to Northern Illinois?

While there are bigger things ahead, that doesn’t mean the Irish shouldn’t enjoy their win over the Trojans. In fact, they might want to look back at photos of the day such as the following:

Notre Dame vs. Virginia: Fourth-Quarter Analysis

This quarter was uneventful, but that’s OK with the win.

Notre Dame didn’t need to do anything fancy to close out Virginia. Never mind that it failed to score on fourth-and-goal to cap a lengthy drive that began in the third quarter. It already had done enough to secure a 35-14 victory, which featured Tony Muskett running for a garbage-time touchdown.

Even though [autotag]Zac Yoakum[/autotag] capped another long drive by missing a 36-yard field goal, hardly anybody at Notre Dame Stadium cared at that point. The Irish were going to cap their home season with another victory. At least for the moment, the loss to Northern Illinois that happened there in September felt like a distant memory.

Obviously, Irish fans aren’t going to forget about that defeat to the Huskies entirely because it still threatens to derail their team’s chances at the College Football Playoff.

The focus now was on the seniors playing perhaps their final game in South Bend. It never is easy for Irish fans to say goodbye to those players, but all good things must end. If this is it for them at home, it was a nice way to go out.

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Former Notre Dame football coach Gerry Faust dies at age 89

Rest in peace, Coach.

Sad news for longtime Notre Dame football fans broke Monday. [autotag]Gerry Faust[/autotag], who coached the Irish from 1981 to 1985, has died at age 89.

Over his five seasons in South Bend, Faust accumulated a record of 30-26-1, good for a .535 winning percentage. Under his leadership, the Irish won the 1983 Liberty Bowl over Doug Flutie and Boston College. The following year, they lost the 1984 Aloha Bowl to SMU in its last game before it was handed the death penalty a few years later.

A disappointing 1985 season in which the Irish went 5-6 prompted Faust to announce that he would resign after the final game against a Miami team coached by Jimmy Johnson. The Irish lost that game, 58-7, and the university would go on to hire [autotag]Lou Holtz[/autotag] as Faust’s successor.

After his Irish tenure ended, Faust went to coach at Akron, where he did so for nine seasons and compiling a 43-53-3 record. But he never lost his love for the Irish no matter how much time passed:

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Faust family during this difficult time.

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Notre Dame men’s basketball to wear green jerseys for four home games

Dress appropriately for these games.

A big deal always is made whenever the Notre Dame football team wears green jerseys. Typically, it’s reserved for a special occasion once a year. But the men’s basketball team has decided one game of green jerseys isn’t enough.

In a video released Monday, the Irish announced that they will wear green jerseys four times at Purcell Pavilion during the 2024-25 season. The video showcases [autotag]Micah Shrewsberry[/autotag] being asked which one of the four games his team should sport the jerseys in.

After a moment, Shrewsberry decides that Syracuse, North Carolina, Virginia Tech and Pittsburgh all need to see the jerseys when they visit South Bend.

The Irish wore green jerseys once last season, and that was a 73-61 loss to Miami. This year, they’ll stick with them of sporting them against ACC competition.

Also of note is that all of the games will be broadcast on network TV. Three of them will be on The CW, and CBS has the game against the Tar Heels. Clearly, the Irish want to look their best while playing for national audiences.

We’ll find out soon enough whether the green jerseys are lucky for the Irish.

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CBS to broadcast Notre Dame-North Carolina men’s basketball game

A sign that the Irish are drawing interest.

The Notre Dame men’s basketball team is on the verge of something special. It won’t happen this year, but it likely will when the Irish’s top-ranked 2025 recruiting class comes in. Until then, there’s interest in where the Irish currently stand.

To that end, CBS Sports unveiled its regular-season schedule for its longstanding college basketball coverage, and the Irish will be part of it. Specifically, they will help tip off a tripleheader of games for CBS on Jan. 4 when they welcome North Carolina to Purcell Pavilion.

This will be the first time the Irish have played on CBS since they picked up a 64-63 road victory over Kentucky on Dec. 12, 2020. It didn’t broadcast any of the three games the Irish played during their last NCAA Tournament appearance in 2022.

The last time the network broadcast a game from South Bend was an 82-55 loss to Virginia on Jan. 26, 2019. The Cavaliers went on to win that year’s national championship:

Here’s hoping the Irish will rise to the occasion of getting national exposure on college basketball’s most prestigious broadcast coverage.

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ESPN’s Charlie Creme highlights Notre Dame in big early-season games

Be sure to watch these games.

Notre Dame is expected to do well this season. Its No. 6 ranking in the AP Top 25 Preseason Poll is evidence of that. Naturally, some of its early games will receive a lot of attention.

In light of the poll’s release, ESPN women’s basketball bracketologist Charlie Creme has published a story that answers the question of what the biggest early-season game is for each team ranked in that poll.

Creme has the Irish’s ACC/SEC Women’s Basketball Challenge matchup against Texas as the Irish’s biggest game and gives the following reason:

“Both the Irish and Longhorns saw freshmen become stars a season ago with their team leaders out with injury. Rori Harmon is back for Texas to team up with Madison Booker, and [autotag]Niele Ivey[/autotag] can now pair [autotag]Hannah Hidalgo[/autotag] and [autotag]Olivia Miles[/autotag], returning from a knee injury. This is a dream backcourt matchup that could define which duo is meshing the best. This looks to be the best Irish team under Ivey. This game and one a week later against UConn, also in South Bend, should tell us just how good.”

The Irish also will face USC early in the season, and Creme has that game as the biggest for the Trojans, who rank third in the poll. Here’s the reason for that:

“A week before the two schools square off in football in Los Angeles, they do the same in basketball. Both the Trojans and the Irish should be in the mix for a No. 1 seed come March, and the winner of this game takes a massive advantage in that quest. One month before (JuJu) Watkins gets to go head-to-head with (Paige) Bueckers, she faces Hannah Hidalgo, the second-best freshman to Watkins a year ago.”

So yeah, there are a few game on the schedule you won’t want to miss. Simply put, don’t.

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Notre Dame-Stanford game delayed by lightning around South Bend

We’re on pause, folks.

Notre Dame was leading Stanford, 42-7, after three quarters. The expectation was that the Irish would breeze through the fourth quarter with backups and enjoy another victory. All of that has been put on hold.

Just as the fourth quarter was about to begin, an announcement was made at Notre Dame Stadium that lightning had been spotted within a 10-mile radius of South Bend. That meant the game was delayed, and the stands had to be evacuated so that fans could seek shelter.

The policy is that a game must be paused if lightning is spotted within 10 miles of the stadium. For each additional lightning strike, an additional 30 minutes are added to the delay.

This obviously isn’t what anyone wanted, but the safety of everyone at the stadium is paramount. The good news is there are plenty of places on campus that are opening their doors to fans to wait the delay out, which is the right thing to do:

Hopefully, we’ll be back for the conclusion of this one very soon.

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Virginia Tech coach Megan Duffy talks Notre Dame at ACC Tipoff

We wish her reasonably well in her first ACC season.

[autotag]Megan Duffy[/autotag] knows all about Notre Dame. She played there for four years during its Big East days, making the all-conference first team twice and being named the conference’s most improved player once. She led the conference in free-throw percentage twice and steals and minutes once apiece.

After playing professionally for a few years, she turned to coaching. For the past five years, she coached Marquette and made three NCAA Tournament appearances, including last year when the Eagles got to play their lone tournament game at Purcell Pavilion.

Duffy now is beginning her first year at Virginia Tech. So when it was her turn to field questions at the annual ACC Tipoff in Charlotte, North Carolina, it was inevitable that she would be asked about the Irish. She was, and here was her answer to that question:

“This has been a dream to play and coach at the best and with the best every single day. My Notre Dame background back in the old Big East it was the depth of the conference, how competitive it was, and this is the same in the ACC.

We obviously understand this is the best conference in the country for all different reasons: the talent of the league, guard play, post play, and then some of the best coaches. I’ve always wanted that challenge.

Just to have it unfold as player and then you obviously build your resume as a coach. It’s special to be here at Virginia Tech and to hopefully be just a small piece of a bigger picture of women’s college basketball and continue to put a great product out there.”

Duffy won’t get to return to South Bend this season as the Hokies will be hosting the Irish on Jan. 30 in Blacksburg. Hopefully, when the time does come for her to come back to her roots, she’ll get a nice ovation from the Irish faithful. She’s earned it.

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