The Past Three Notre Dame Football Seasons Post-Golden Dome Regildings

We’ve Seen Some Success After The Golden Dome Facelifts

As Joshua took us through last week, the Golden Dome is getting regilded again for the first time since 2005. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish season usually has not started after the regilding of The Dome is complete, but this year we will see it updated until October. The Golden Dome has been regilded 11 previous times, the most recent other times in 2005, 1988, and 1971. The Fighting Irish have seen success the season right after The Dome has been completed looking even more shiny. I wanted to take a look at how we have seen the team do because I remember the narrative around 2005 was that the last time this happened to The Dome in 1988 the team won the national championship.

1971

Wikipedia

The Football Team had a really strong season, going 8-2 in 1971 under Ara Parseghian. Some notable moments were beating Northwestern and Michigan State at home as well as shutting out Miami in the Orange Bowl Stadium. Unfortunately, one of only two losses that year was to USC at home. Fortunately, we saw one of the iconic moments in all of Notre Dame Football history with “The Genuflect Play” to beat Purdue 8-7.

1988

This is pretty self-explanatory. The Irish won the national championship, the most recent one for the program. There are so many highlights of course, so I will leave you with one of my personal favorites, the time the Notre Dame Stadium crown got called a penalty against them for being too loud against Michigan. I’m so proud.

2005

This was an interesting one, and one where the superstitious Irish fans had the idea that since 1988 was the last time the Dome was regilded that history would repeat itself. It did not, but the Irish did come out from a terrible stretch after Bob Davie and Ty Willingham. Charlie Weis came into the program, and we got the resurgence of Brady Quinn, The Shark, et. al. Even though the final record was 9-3 with some brutal losses and the Bush Push, we saw an incredibly fun season.

There is definitely some promise and history on our side for an upcoming good season, but the team is going to have to execute to make it another season to remember. We can’t rely on total superstition, even if yours truly here is just a little stitious.