Notre Dame will host Rice in 2014, when current Irish DE Aaron Lynch is a senior. (WSBT Photo) |
Notre Dame will turn the page back to 1988, it's last national championship season, in 2014.
Notre Dame has agreed to play Rice in football in 2014. Rice Athletic Director Rick Greenspan made the announcement on Monday. The exact date of the game, which will be played in South Bend, Indiana and telecast nationally on NBC, will be announced at a later date.
Notre Dame's current freshman class, which features Aaron Lynch and George Atkinson III, will be seniors in 2014, as would redshirt freshman quarterback Andrew Hendrix.
"Notre Dame is a program that shares our core beliefs about college athletics," Greenspan said. "We both believe that the pursuit of excellence in the classroom need not become secondary to the pursuit of championships in athletics. This type of scheduled is reflective of the greater overall vision for the second century of Rice Athletics that we will begin share in the coming weeks," he noted.
"We are excited to add this game to the schedule in order to give our student-athletes and our fans this tremendous opportunity to experience a game day in South Bend and renew this series with the Irish," Greenspan added.
The Owls and Fighting Irish have met four previous times in history, with Notre Dame having won all of the previous meetings. The two schools first met in Houston in 1915 to close out the season with a 55-2 Notre Dame win.
They did not meet again until 1973, when the Irish took a 28-0 decision in Houston and followed that up with a 10-3 in South Bend the following year. The two schools last met in 1988, when Notre Dame won 54-11.
