Curly Lambeau surely would have enjoyed today’s big college football news.
The University of Wisconsin and the University of Notre Dame have agreed to a two-year, neutral-site series, beginning with a game on Oct. 3, 2020 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, the sides announced Monday. The Badgers and Fighting Irish will play again the following season on Sept. 25, 2021 at Soldier Field in Chicago. The contests will be the first meetings between the teams since a three-game series from 1962 to '64.
The matchup in 2020 will mark Notre Dame’s first-ever appearance at legendary Lambeau Field, which is named after Curly Lambeau, the former Irish football player who went on to found and coach the Green Bay Packers. Wisconsin has played just once at the stadium, for last year’s 16-14 victory over No. 5 LSU in the Lambeau Field College Classic.
"We’re honored to have the opportunity to host Notre Dame and Wisconsin, two excellent schools and storied college football programs," said Packers President/CEO Mark Murphy. "We’re excited to welcome fans of both schools for what is sure to be an incredible weekend here in Green Bay, and we’re looking forward to enjoying the college atmosphere once again at Lambeau Field."
The announcement comes after the success of last year’s Lambeau Field College Classic, which had a significant economic impact on Green Bay, with fans of both programs traveling to the area for the week of the game. The Wisconsin-Notre Dame meeting in 2020 will mark just the second major college football game in the history of Lambeau Field. In 1983, NCAA Division III St. Norbert College defeated Fordham University at the nearby stadium.
"We at Wisconsin are honored to have the privilege to play a program with the rich tradition of Notre Dame. It's been a while in the works. It's taken a while to put this together, but I'm very excited about it," said Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, who was a Notre Dame assistant coach in the late 1980s, during a joint news conference Monday in Chicago.
The Lambeau Field game will count as a Wisconsin home date. The Badgers are 6-8 in the two teams’ 14 previous meetings.
Details regarding game time, tickets and other related information will be announced at a later date.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
