Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/83990
Charting The Irish Notre Dame will be out of the office next Saturday before taking on Miami in Chicago on Oct. 6. A week off has generally done the Irish well during the last quarter of a century — until recently that is. Notre Dame has won 26 of its 32 football games following a bye week since the national championship season in 1988. That gives the Irish an .812 winning percentage in those games, which is a major jump from their overall record in the same time period (.660) and their record in games the week before they get to rest (.548). The team has two six-year winning streaks coming off of byes in that time frame, but the past six years have been a different story. Starting with the 34‑31 loss to No. 1 USC in 2005 and ending with last year’s loss to an unranked USC team, the Irish have lost four of their last seven post-bye matchups. The good signs for the Irish in 2012 are that they have only lost one of 10 games outside of Notre Dame Stadium coming off a bye — to Florida State at Orlando, Fla., in 1994. They also have only one loss when taking their break in September — 17-10 to Michigan State in 2001. Notre Dame hasn’t had a bye week in the first month of the season since 2002 when the Irish used to schedule two open dates each fall. Notre Dame’s Winning Percentage … Overall From 1988-2011.660 The Week Before a Bye.548 The Week After a Bye.812 The Week After a Bye At Home.778 The Week After a Bye On the Road.875 The Week After a Bye Neutral Site.500 The Week After a September Bye.857 The Week After an October Bye.714 The Week After a November Bye.909 The Week After a Bye Since 2005.429 Football In Fenway? During Notre Dame’s preparation for Michigan, multiple media outlets, including the Boston Globe, reported Notre Dame’s 2014 meeting with Connecticut potentially being played at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. Head coach Brian Kelly said he wasn’t sure the venue was large enough to comfortably and safely fit a football field, but as a Massachusetts native he was warm to the idea. “Being a Boston guy, baseball hasn’t been very good there so maybe we’ll bring some football,” Kelly said. “… I think it would be cool.” Later that same day, Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick issued the following statement in a school press release: “We have work to do on our future football schedules, given the announcement last week relative to our upcoming Atlantic Coast Conference relationship. However, media reports today that we will play Connecticut in Fenway Park in 2014 are inaccurate.”