Notre Dame Football: Fighting Irish Media Adds 1994 Games For Online Viewing

Notre Dame Fighting Irish Media added five 1994 home games to its website Thursday, giving many football fans their first chance to revisit the beginning of the Ron Powlus era.

You can watch the games against the No. 6 Michigan Wolverines (26-24 loss), Stanford Cardinal (35-14 win), No. 25 BYU Cougars (21-14 loss), Navy Midshipmen (58-24 win) and Air Force Falcons (42-30 win). The 39-21 win against the Purdue Boilermakers is not, as yet, available.

The Irish finished 6-5-1 in 1994. Powlus, in his redshirt freshman season, was 119-for-222 for 1,729 yards, 19 touchdowns and nine interceptions. His main target was Derrick Mayes, who caught 47 balls for 847 yards and 11 scores. The Irish’s top three running backs were Randy Kinder (735 yards, 4 touchdowns); Lee Becton (571 yards, 3 touchdowns) and Ray Zellars (470 yards, 3 touchdowns). Brian Magee led all defensive players with 81 tackles. Shawn Wooden had eight pass breakups.

While YouTube currently hosts about 225 complete Notre Dame games, eight of the 12 Irish games its 1994 campaign couldn’t be watched. Now, thanks to NBC and the university, we’re missing just five games (at Northwestern, at Michigan State, Purdue, at Boston College, at USC).

The Vault now contains 81 complete NBC broadcasts from the 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2018, 2019 and 2020 seasons as well as the 1995 USC, 2002 Michigan game, 2003 Navy game and 2015 Texas game. It was launched last March as a way to satiate Irish fans hunkering down amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic.