UW, Notre Dame agree to play two games

Teams will meet at Lambeau in 2020 and Soldier Field in 2021

Although officials from Wisconsin and Notre Dame began talking more than a decade ago about seeing their football programs meet on the field, the final push toward a successful two-game agreement was UW’s 2016 opener against LSU at Lambeau Field.

“The majority of our team is from the state of Wisconsin,” UW athletic director Barry Alvarez said Monday during a news conference in Chicago. “They grew up watching the Packers and watching the Badgers . ...

“To play a game there ... and the atmosphere turned into a college atmosphere and just the electricity around Green Bay and in the stadium was truly special for our athletes.”

Alvarez and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick hope to replicate that atmosphere in 2020 and ’21.

The Irish will visit Lambeau Field on Oct. 3, 2020. Because that game is to be televised by NBC, Notre Dame will be the designated home team.

UW will face Notre Dame on Sept. 25, 2021, at Soldier Field. The Big Ten owns the rights to that game and UW will be the home team.

“The hosting is really related to television,” Swarbrick said.

UW rallied to defeat LSU, 1614, in front of a raucous crowd of 77,823 in the 2016 opener at Lambeau Field.

After the victory, most of the UW players sprinted toward the stands and did their own version of the Lambeau Leap. The images still linger. UW routed Northern Illinois, 49-7, at Soldier Field in Week 3 of the 2011 season.

The announced crowd was just 41,068 at the game in Chicago, but both Alvarez and Swar-

brick anticipate the UWNotre Dame game set for Soldier Field will be a hot ticket. Swarbrick noted Notre Dame in recent seasons has played games at Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium and Soldier Field.

“Playing in iconic venues like that creates an extra excitement,” Swarbrick said, adding attendance is more evenly split at a neutral site. “That creates a unique atmosphere. That is the same atmosphere you get at a national championship game. The energy in a stadium when you do that … it is going to be a great atmosphere.”

UW and Notre Dame have met 16 times, with the Irish holding an 8-6-2 lead. However, the last meeting came in 1964 in Madison, a 31-7 victory by the Irish. They first played in 1900, with the Badgers winning, 54-0.

Talks between UW and Notre Dame began when Alvarez was still serving as head coach and athletic director. He stepped down as head coach after the 2005 season.

“These things are always a Rubik’s Cube when you’re trying to put them together,” Swarbrick said. “We had to stick with it. But in so many regards, it came together exactly as we wanted it to and I think it will be a great experience.”

Mark Murphy, President and CEO of the Green Bay Packers, lauded the work of Alvarez and Swarbrick.

“Barry has been great to work with,” Murphy said, adding the team’s Titletown District should be open in 2020. “And this series would not have come about if not for Barry with his strong connections with Notre Dame and Wisconsin.”

Alvarez was defensive coordinator at Notre Dame before being hired as the head coach at Wisconsin in 1990.

Another footnote to the game at Lambeau Field: Curly Lambeau played for legendary coach Knute Rockne at Notre Dame in 1918, a year before founding the Packers.

Alvarez made it clear UW officials will continue to look into putting together similar neutralsite agreements.

“We won’t do it every year,” he said, “but it is something that if it works, if it makes sense, that we would consider doing it.”

Details about ticket sales for the UW-Notre Dame games will come at a later date.