Clemson, Notre Dame to face off in Cotton Bowl
ARLINGTON, TEXAS — Clemson is getting a playoff first-timer and an unfamiliar stadium for its fourth consecutive College Football Playoff appearance.
The No. 2-ranked Tigers (13-0) will play No. 3 Notre Dame (12-0) in the Cotton Bowl on Dec. 29 at AT&T Stadium.
"We've got an unbelievable amount of respect for Notre Dame here at Clemson, and obviously a couple of years ago we had an epic battle in a hurricane," coach Dabo Swinney said. "We won't have to worry about that. We'll be in a great dry environment and it should be a lot of fun."
While Notre Dame is the first independent team to make the playoff, the Irish went undefeated with 10 wins over Power Five teams. That included five ACC teams, four of them that Clemson also played this season.
Clemson has never played at the home stadium of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, which hosted the first national championship game in the CFP era in 2014. The bowl last served as a semifinal three years ago, when Alabama beat Michigan State 38-0. The Tigers' only Cotton Bowl was on Jan. 1, 1940, a 6-3 win over Boston College.
Notre Dame last played in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day 1994, beating Texas A&M when the game
was still in its namesake stadium about 20 miles away at the site of the State Fair of Texas. The Fighting Irish are 5-2 in Cotton Bowl games.
The Irish were off Saturday when Clemson was beating Pittsburgh 42-10 to win its fourth consecutive ACC championship game exactly 10 years after Swinney was hired as the Tigers coach.
"Dabo has done an incredible job of building a consistent, elite football team year-in, year-out," Notre Dame coach Brian
Kelly said. "We know what we're going to get."
This will be only the fourth meeting between Clemson and Notre Dame, the first in a bowl game. The Irish won the first meeting in 1977, while the Tigers won in 1979 and 2015.
In that last matchup, then-No. 12 Clemson beat No. 6 Notre Dame 24-22 in heavy rains from Hurricane Joaquin as it impacted the East Coast that October day. Deshaun Watson threw two TDs and ran for another score.