Notre Dame Football: Irish and Coastal Carolina in the Fiesta Bowl? LFG!

247 Sports released their latest New Years Six bowl projections, and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish make an appearance. Notre Dame is projected to head to the Fiesta Bowl to take on the Sun Belt kings — the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers.

Before we get any further into this discussion, please keep in mind that I did NOT — in fact — find a loss on Notre Dame’s schedule, and think 11-1 is the floor for the Irish.

Having said that... this is perfectly fine. To start with, at worst, this projection means the Irish went 10-2 during the regular season. That would make it 5 years straight with double digit wins. Go ahead and look what the Irish did from 1994-2016 before you roll your eyes, and then get back to me.

Now let’s get to that large elephant in the room — and I ain’t talking about the Alabama Crimson Tide elephant men. Notre Dame hasn’t won a New Year’s 6 bowl game since January 1, 1994. The very next season, the Irish went 6-4-1 and received an invitation to the Fiesta Bowl to play the #4 Colorado Buffaloes.

The Irish had NO BUSINESS being invited to that game, and were wiped out 41-24 while wearing the green jerseys. That game cause a crack in space and time, and a demon creature was released from the abyss to curse the Irish in all future New Years Six games. In all, the Irish are 0-9 in New Years 6 games (which includes the BCS Championship in 2012) since the Cotton Bowl win from the 1993 season.

Someway and somehow, the Irish need to break this curse. For a lot of those New Years 6 losses, the Irish played a terrible draw against a great team, while watching other schools get themselves a NY6 win over some team with 4 losses that snuck in because of conference tie-in stuff.

So, yeah... I wouldn’t mind an easier task in playing Coastal rather than a school that just missed the playoffs. Sometimes you just have to get the monkey off of your back, or goat, or whatever the hell it is. Am I selling Coastal short? Maybe, but I’ll deal with that later. An 11-2 Notre Dame team with a Fiesta Bowl win breaks the Colorado curse — so we can finally move on.

Also... it’s still May.