Football
- Head Coach: Brian Kelly
- Stadium: Notre Dame Stadium
- National Championships: 11 Consensus (1924, 1929, 1930, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1966, 1973, 1977, 1988). There are other years (1919, 1920, 1938, 1953, 1964, 1989, 1993) where various polls claim Notre Dame as a National Champion, but those years are not consensus titles, and thusly are not claimed by the university.
The school has a comprehensive and nationally competitive Division I athletic program, but it is most famous for its football program. Notre Dame fielded its first football team in 1887. With eleven NCAA football championships, over 800 all time wins, seven Heisman Trophy winners, famous head coaches, a 73.6% winning percentage and the most consensus All-Americans of any school, Notre Dame football is one of the most storied programs both on the gridiron and college athletics in general. Recently, Notre Dame has struggled, going through several head coaches and setting the all-time bowl losing streak of nine straight with the loss to LSU in the 2007 Sugar Bowl before beating Hawaii in the 2008 Hawaii Bowl. Notre Dame is also the only team, including professional ones, in the nation with every home game being on national broadcast television.
In addition to having the oldest university marching band in the country, the school has many rivalries in football, the most famous ones being with USC, Navy, Michigan State, Army, Purdue, and Michigan. Notre Dame played in arguably the greatest, although certainly not the most-watched (due to Notre Dame games' already having been broadcast nationally that season as many times as allowed, ABC had to relegate its broadcast to a regional one), college football game in history: the famous (or infamous) 10-10 tie against Michigan State at Spartan Stadium on November 19, 1966. Other Notre Dame rivalries include those with Stanford, Boston College and Pittsburgh. Former rivalries include a very intense rivalry in the 1980s with Miami (Catholics vs. Convicts), and a rivalry with Penn State, which was renewed and played on September 9, 2006, and again during the 2007 season. The football program is also known for ending the Oklahoma NCAA record winning streak of 47 games. The streak-ending game was a 7–0 victory for the Fighting Irish on November 9, 1957. Incidentally, Oklahoma's 28-21 loss to Notre Dame to open the 1953 season was the last loss before the beginning of the streak. In 2012, Oklahoma (at the time 6-1) was favored to defeat Notre Dame (at the time 9-0) by 18 points. Notre Dame ending up winning 30-13 thanks to LB Manti T'eo's game clinching interception late in the 4th quarter, Notre Dame's stellar defense, and a bad snap in the first quarter by Oklahoma's center that sent them back to the 14 yard line. Thanks to the win by Notre Dame, the rivalry has been renewed.
Read more about this topic: Notre Dame Fighting Irish Baseball
Famous quotes containing the word football:
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“... in the minds of search committees there is the lingering question: Can she manage the football coach?”
—Donna E. Shalala (b. 1941)