Notre Dame Road Stadium Tour: FedEx Field

This is part four of six in this series taking a look at all of the stadiums Notre Dame will play in away from home this year.

Up next is a NFL Stadium and the second largest venue the Irish will play inside in 2011.

If you've missed any of the previous installments click on the names below:

Heinz Field

Ross-Ade Stadium

Stanford Stadium

Get ready for some neutral site action with turtles!

We're heading to FedEx Field...

Location: Landover, Maryland

Opened: September 1997

Capacity: 82,000

Surface: Natural Grass

• FedEx Field is home to the NFL’s Washington Redskins and was built to replace RFK Stadium where the team had played since its opening in 1961.
• FedEx Field was originally called Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in honor of the team’s owner, but was changed in 1999, two years after Cooke’s death.

RFK Stadium, with the Capitol in the background

• FedEx Field’s seating capacity was 91,704 and by far the largest in the NFL up until 2011 when it was reconfigured. Now, the new Meadowlands Stadium is slightly larger.
• The Redskins are annually among the top teams in attendance in the NFL each season.
• The Redskins team record for attendance came in a 2007 game against the Dallas Cowboys as 90,910 fans packed into FedEx Field to watch Washington clinch a playoff birth against their division rival.
• When the USC Trojans traveled across the country to play Virginia Tech to open the 2004 college football season 91,665 people were inside FedEx.
• Notre Dame has not played Maryland at FedEx Field, but did beat the Terrapins 22-0 in the schools’ only meeting in 2002 at Giants Stadium. That was head coach Tyrone Willingham’s first game at Notre Dame and the unranked Irish upset the No. 21 ranked Terps that day.

Notre Dame coming out for the 2002 season opener against Maryland at Giants Stadium

• However, the Fighting Irish have played at FedEx Field (when it was still called Jack Kent Cooke Stadium) defeating Navy 30-0 in 1998.
• Last season 86,587 fans filled FedEx Field to watch Boise State defeat Virginia Tech 33-30 to open the season. Later in 2010 FedEx was filled with 78,790 fans who watched Penn State defeat Indiana 41-24.

Boise State's triumph over Virginia Tech was the last marquee college game at FedEx Field.

• Other college football games in the future at FedEx Field include the 112^th Army-Navy game in December 2011, Cincinnati-Virginia Tech in 2012, BYU-West Virginia in 2016, and Maryland-Texas in 2018.
• FedEx Field is notorious for being a poor place to watch football with traffic, parking, and a stale cavernous atmosphere being the major culprits. Despite being only 15 years old, Redskins owner Dan Syder is looking into building a new stadium and returning the team to the District of Columbia.

• The Notre Dame-Maryland game this season will be the Terrapins first at FedEx Field. Their current home stadium in College Park has a seating capacity of 54,000, or just under 66% the size of the Redskins home stadium.
• Maryland is 4-1 at a neutral site games over the past five seasons, while Notre Dame is 6-2 during that same time span.

Commence bitching about the inaccessibility and staleness of FedEx Field, as well as the evil that is Dan Snyder from Redskin and Notre Dame alumni in the DC Metro area.