Blue & Gold Illustrated: 2020 Notre Dame Football Preview
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1264448
20 ✦ BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2020 FOOTBALL PREVIEW Irish momentum from the past three seasons is now facing unique challenges and the unknown BY LOU SOMOGYI I n the world of optometry, 20/20 vision is the standard to mea- sure one's sharpness with the eyeballs. Unfortunately, a new 2020 has created a cloudy or blurry outlook in athletics and beyond. History will forever remember the year 2020 as the one with the COVID-19 pandemic, just like 1929 is associated among Americans with the stock market crash, 1941 with the Pearl Harbor invasion, 1963 with the JFK assassination and 2001 with the 9/11 tragedy. Notre Dame's football program in the present has been brightened with a 33-6 mark the past three seasons, the sixth-best winning percentage in the 130-team Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), highlighted by the 2018 bid to the four-team College Football Playoff. However, the immediate future in 2020 is filled with murkiness. Although the Fighting Irish are projected to remain a top-10 to top-15 fixture on the gridiron, how the season itself will transpire is a mystery. The originally scheduled Aug. 29 opener versus Navy in Ireland already was moved to An- napolis for Labor Day weekend. What else will be in the works? Will the Pac-12 look to play only league games? If so, who will replace Stanford and USC on Notre Dame's schedule? Will three other neutral-site venues for the Fighting Irish in Green Bay, Charlotte and At- lanta be moved to on-campus sites? Can practices and workouts be realistically achieved amidst social distancing mandates? What if someone on the team or for an opponent contracts the coronavirus? Does the fear of another outbreak from a second wave then force more cancellations or postponements? How will limited capacity in stadiums alter the overall game experience? 2020 2020 VISION VISION PHOTO BY ANDRIS VISOCKIS