Friday, May 9, 2008

Notre Dame to play Arizona State at New Cowboys Stadium in 2013

Notre Dame logoThis might be the most random college football news I’ve heard in years. Notre Dame and Arizona State University announced yesterday “that they will play a football game on Oct. 5, 2013, at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.” (link) The reason for the long wait is that the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium doesn’t open until the summer of 2009. This will be the second time in five years Notre Dame will be playing a home game away from South Bend and down in heart of Texas. They already have a game schedule in 2009 to play Washington State University in San Antonio.

Arizona State University logoFor those interested in tickets, “Notre Dame expects to make tickets available to its contributing alumni and fans throught he alumni lottery as it does with all other football games…and a public sale will be conducted through the Cowboys stadium.” (link) Arizona State will be given “a maximum of 15,000 tickets for the game” as the visiting team. (link) This seems like pretty low to The Blot considering the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium will seat 80,000 and can be expanded to hold upwards of 100,000.

Notre Dame Leprechaun MascotI know Texas is a hotbed of high school football and one of the top two or three states for college football recruiting, but ND and ASU both traveling across multiple states to play in a neutral location seems pretty excessive. I didn’t realize ND was already doing this with Washington State, but that seems pretty crazy too. I know ND has fans all over the country but the Pac-10 teams will probably be struggling to find local fan support, especially WSU. Who knew all three teams were so desperate to recruit in north Texas.

Arizona State University Mascot SparkyI’m interested in a) seeing what type of impact these two games have on local recruiting for the schools and b) how many tickets these two games will be able to sell locally. I’ve felt the shine from the golden domers has been really tarnished these past few years and that NBC continuing their television contract with them is ridiculous. These games in Texas will be a good barometer as to how big of a draw ND really is still. With that being said, I guess if I lived in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area I’d probably travel to Arlington on a Saturday afternoon in October to see the Notre Dame Fighting Irish lose to the Arizona State Sun Devils.