Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football - Uniforms

Uniforms

Notre Dame's home jersey is dark blue with white numerals, gold outlining, and a small interlocking "ND" logo on each sleeve. The away jersey is white with blue numerals, gold outlining, and the interlocking "ND" on the sleeves. In recent years, neither jersey included the player's name on the back, but names were included during the Dan Devine and Gerry Faust eras. However, for the Irish's Hawai'i Bowl appearance in 2008 vs. the University of Hawai'i, Notre Dame once again wore last names on their jerseys. Gold pants, with a small ND logo just below the left waist, are worn with both home and away jerseys.

Notre Dame's helmets are solid gold with gray facemasks, the gold being emblematic of the University's famed "Golden Dome." It is a Notre Dame tradition for the team's student managers to spray-paint the team's helmets prior to each game, ensuring that they keep their gold shine each week.

Over the years, Notre Dame has occasionally worn green instead of blue as its home jersey, sometimes adopting the jersey for an entire season – or more – at a time. Currently, Notre Dame reserves its green jerseys for "special" occasions. Often on such occasions, the Irish will take the field for warmups dressed in blue, only to switch to green when they go back to the locker room before kickoff. This tradition was started by Dan Devine in 1977 before the USC game. Notre Dame has also been known to switch jerseys at halftime, as during the 1985 USC game, and in the loss to Nile Kinnick-led Iowa in 1939, although this was to help avoid confusion between their navy uniforms and Iowa's black ones. The current design of the jersey is kelly green with gold numbers and white outlining. For the 2006 Army game, Coach Charlie Weis broke out the Green jerseys as a reward to his senior players, as well finally ending the string of losses by the Irish when wearing green. Notre Dame wore throwback green jerseys in 2007 against USC in honor of the 30th anniversary of the 1977 National Championship team. On at least one occasion (1992 Sugar Bowl) Notre Dame has worn an away variant of the jersey: a white jersey with green numbers. Adidas is the current outfitter of Notre Dame football and all Notre Dame athletics.

During Gerry Faust's tenure (1981–85), Notre Dame's blue jerseys switched from the traditional navy to royal blue with gold and white stripes on the sleeves. The navy blue jerseys returned in 1984.

No uniform numbers have been retired by Notre Dame. Upon being issued a number, each player is given a card which lists some of the more famous players who have worn that particular number. Number 3 is perhaps the most famous number in Irish football history, having been worn by Ralph Guglielmi, George Izo, Daryle Lamonica, Coley O'Brien, Joe Montana, Michael Floyd, Rick Mirer and Ron Powlus, among others. Number 5 is also notable, as it is the only number to be worn by one of the Four Horsemen (Elmer Layden) a Heisman Trophy Winner (Paul Hornung) and a National Title winning Quarterback (Terry Hanratty). Number 7 has been worn by such Irish greats as 1964 Heisman Trophy winner John Huarte, 1970 Heisman runner-up Joe Theismann, Steve Beuerlein, Jimmy Clausen and Jarious Jackson.

In 2011, both Michigan and Notre Dame wore throwback uniforms in their game against each other. In the Shamrock Series game against Maryland later that year, the Fighting Irish wore large green shamrock stickers on their helmets. For their upcoming October 6, 2012 Shamrock Series game against the University of Miami at Soldier Field, Notre Dame and Adidas have announced that the school will wear specially-designed helmets, jerseys, and pants.