The 2020 and 2021 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football schedules are coming into focus. On Monday, August 14th Wisconsin and Notre Dame will make it official for a two-game series, the first in 2020 to be played at Lambeau Field and the following year at Soldier Field.
The last time the Irish and Badgers played the Beatles had just finished up their first American tour in September 1964. But wait, no Camp Randall!???
For me personally, I’m unlikely to make the trip to Wisconsin for the game so I can’t say I really care either way. If you’re being generous Camp Randall is a tier 2 college football stadium. Any time the premier advertisement for your stadium is a 2-minute rendition of a House of Pain song you’re really not selling yourself like some of the other elite places across the country.
A game at Wisconsin is roughly 98% about sampling everything that Madison has to offer as one of the country’s greatest college towns. If you’re willing to make the trip I agree with your frustration.
Big news regarding our future schedule tomorrow.
Stay tuned… pic.twitter.com/Okz7U3tlSP
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) August 13, 2017
However, these games are largely television productions and in that respect Lambeau > Camp Randall and I don’t think it’s very close. One is the third or fourth best stadium in the Big Ten, the other is perhaps America’s greatest professional football stadium.
Plus, the city of Green Bay and the Packers are about to open a 35-acre “Title Town” district to the west of Lambeau which will include a park, plaza, residential development, brewery, hotel & spa, sledding hill, ice rink, full-size football field, adult game area, plus more space yet to be developed. That’s a pretty unique experience that’s several levels above the generic NFL stadium.
The game at Solider Field instead of South Bend is the bigger issue, in my opinion. But I’ll take it for the game at Lambeau Field. Still, unless the schedules line up and the game is unusually important I would expect the return game at Soldier Field to be much more of a snoozefest.
2020 Schedule
Home: Arkansas, Stanford, Clemson, Duke, Louisville
Away: Purdue, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, USC
Neutral: Navy, Wisconsin
We now have all 12 games lined up although the dates for Clemson, Duke, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Wisconsin are not determined yet. September is full (including a season opener at MetLife Stadium vs. Navy and the Hogs coming to campus in week two) so we could be looking at a cold, late season matchup at Lambeau Field. Halloween is available!
No doubt, this is a super weak true road game schedule, although it’ll be the first game with Purdue after a 6-year absence. Yeah, that does make it sound worse.
This home schedule looks quite promising four years out. Arkansas will be making their first-ever trip to Notre Dame and Clemson will be making just their second trip to South Bend and the first since 1979.
2021 Schedule
Home: Toledo, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Navy, North Carolina, USC
Away: Florida State, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Stanford
Neutral: Wisconsin
Toledo has won 29 games over the past 3 seasons but virtually no one is going to see anything beyond a MAC team, especially half a decade away. However, the Irish will play the Rockets coming off a short week following a Labor Day matchup in Tallahassee. Anyway, this 2021 home schedule is as bad as the 2020 home schedule is good.
The away schedule–led by that nationally featured game at Florida State–is definitely short and sweet. Looking over this entire schedule with Big Ten (2), MAC (1), ACC (5), Pac-12 (2), and AAC (1) teams there’s probably a good fit for one more lower-level Power 5 team.
The frozen tundra in 2020 sounds like fun!
Eric, I’m not sure why you think an ND-Wisc game at Soldier Field would be a “snooze-fest.” I expect it to be one of the marquee games of the season. Wisconsin has been very good lately, having won 10 or more games six of the last eight years. Sure they play some weak teams, but so do most other programs. Wisconsin is a good team and will likely be good when we play them three and four years from now. Two big time college programs who don’t play each other very often facing off in Chicago, likely in prime time, with one of the teams looking for revenge for a loss the year before – sounds like the very opposite of a snooze-fest to me.
I love going to home games but, a game in Chicago is nice too. We had a great time in 2012.
I view it a lot like the Winter Classic or throwing a huge party, only to do those things a year later. The novelty wears off very quickly.
Wisconsin is good but will we be? Sure if we’re both good it’ll be a big game but the odds probably aren’t too high if it’s a later season game.
Anyway, that’s probably my point. The Lambeau game will be novelty, the first meeting in forever, and in a much more appealing venue. The game at Soldier is more of another neutral site game dependent on the teams being good as the main draw. And I don’t think Wisconsin is a huge national draw. Probably a step or two below this year’s Georgia game.
They aren’t a big national draw, but they are a consistently solid program. I’d rather have scheduled an SEC program, though.
I realize this may be heresy for Chicago people to read, but Soldier Field is a lousy venue in which to watch a football game. If you are stuck in the corners you are miles away from the field with a really crappy view. No way I will make the mistake of paying for tickets there again. You’d be better off going on a bar crawl and watching the game in the last bar you reach.
So, Lambeau is a fun novelty. Soldier Field is a big fat “meh” in my view.
Having a lousy seat at any sporting event stinks. I’ve only been to Soldier Field once, I had a real good seat.
Watching an ND home game from the top corners isn’t a great viewing experience either though.
It’s better than Soldier Field. You are miles from the action at Soldier Field when you are in those corners. The stadium at ND was built for football. Soldier Field was probably built with hopes to host anything, from Jack Dempsey fights to the Olympics.
Great location – sh*tty facility. Just my opinion.
When were you at Soldier Field? Since the renovations several years ago, the seating bowl is FAR better than what it used to be. From the outside, it looks like a spaceship sat on a bunch of roman columns, but the inside is really a nice place to watch a game. It is a true bowl, with little space around the field (a la ND). Plus, given that it is significantly smaller than ND (barely larger than ND’s original bowl) the seats in the corners are much closer to the field than they are at ND. Check out a picture of the inside:
True, it used to be a horrid place to watch a game unless you were along the sidelines. Now, there really are no bad seats.
I’ll go ahead and disagree with the “Lambeau is perhaps the best NFL stadium” bit. I think if you’re comparing it to COLLEGE stadiums, then yeah, it’s probably better than a good number of those. When I went to Lambeau I thought it seemed like a college stadium that was being used for the NFL anyway. I get that it has some sort of historical aura around it but outside of that, the stadium itself isnt really all that exciting. There’s no unique features to it, the walk areas are completely closed off so you cant tell whats going on during the game(I’d never leave during gametime, but I know some do), and the exterior is just ok-ish. Again, for a college stadium it’s really nice but you cant look at Heinz Field, AT&T, even Levi stadium and say Lambeau is a greater stadium than any of those. I even liked soldier field with the sculptures and the outer skin around it better than I liked Lambeau.
That game at Lambeau will be all about aura, though. I agree with the sentiment that they probably are going to the well a little too much, which cheapens how special a “special” moment can be, when they’re trying these things every year, but so it goes.
I would guess Lambeau’s a better visual and host for a college game than a hall-full Heinz Field where no one really cares and the city has no buzz (so, pretty much every Pitt game ever). So it has that going for it, at least. I don’t think many are arguing it’s the best stadium in the world, I don’t think that either, but for all the NFL stadium it’s probably a more interesting visual than playing in a modern monolith with little to no buzz (like a game in the new Giants stadium last year, which they’re going back to in 2020). But, of course, even then the objective isn’t to create the best visual/stadium experience or buzz.
I was using greatest in a historical sense. Of course it can’t compare to something like the Falcons new stadium if you’re going by flash and amenities.
Yeah, I think it may just have been the wording you used. I agreed that it’s nice when you compare to college digs. Just the way you worded it made it sound like you were comparing it to other NFL stadiums
Reportedly (from Brian Hamilton) we will be the home team at Lambeau and Wisconsin will be the home team at Soldier Field, for some reason. Connecting the dots, it seems likely Lambeau will serve as a Shamrock Series game. Which is fine – if you’re going to have the Shamrock thing, matchups like that are worth the designation.
So it’s both Shamrock Series games. That’s…interesting.
On another note, are we really only going to have 5 true home games in 2020? That seems unlikely. I imagine ND will figure out a way to get a 6th, probably by negotiating some sort of home-game swap involving the ACC opponents.
Yeah thought that was odd.