Notre Dame Football: Irish are finally going ALL IN on ALL GREEN

It looks like Notre Dame finally gets it. After all of these years... the university is diving into the green out thing with both feet, eyes wide shut, and maybe even with a couple of bottles of scotch.

We knew last year that when the Irish and Ohio State finally met on the field in South Bend this season, both teams would be undefeated and ranked in the top 10 — we just knew it (prove me wrong fools).

With that start to the season comes all of the normal college football hoopla as well. ESPN’s College Gameday will be on campus and all of the trappings of a “big game” will be a part of the experience for both programs and the fans.

Marcus Freeman gets it.

“We’re excited about just the atmosphere, the experience that’s going to be here with College Gameday and the Pat McAfee show and NBC. We get to finally wear the green uniforms. They talked me into wearing a green jacket today. And so, I said I’ll wear It. We expect to see a lot of green in that stadium. And I think it’s going to be a really cool opportunity, a great opportunity on Saturday night to play a great opponent in Notre Dame Stadium.”

It took a long time for Notre Dame to buy in all the way with the type of game atmosphere that they are planning to produce on Saturday. Even when Notre Dame finally promoted a “green out” they did so without wearing the green jerseys — which seems like one of the easier things to do. It wasn’t until the summer of 2022 while Marcus Freeman was preparing for his first season as the head coach that it was finally said that green outs meant green jerseys.

That was for Cal — which wasn’t near any type of level that this game is this season. It certainly didn’t have this all out effort to create the greatest green atmosphere Irish fans have witnessed inside Notre Dame Stadium.

“We want to see a lot of green in here. That’s the cool thing about Saturday. We have green jerseys. I don’t know if they’re calling it a green out, but we want to see a lot of green. Our players notice it and appreciate that, especially pregame. We want to make sure there’s as many Notre Dame fans as we can. I think they’re doing some cool things for the fan experience. I encourage our fans: make sure that you guys are here and let’s get as much green in this stadium as we can.”

That pregame stuff that Freeman mentioned has to do with a special LED light show that will involve every fan with a ticketed seat.

It took a long time for Notre Dame to fully buy into something on this level, but after years of fans begging and probably helped by visiting opponents stadiums with this type of commitment, the green out inside Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday night will be on one hundred thousand trillion.

Should be sweet.

Our very own Brendan McAlinden went on the Silver Bullets Podcast the other day to talk about the game, and according to them, it doesn’t sound like this will be the type of fan invasion we all dread like Georgia in 2017.

Sounds good to me!

Marcus Freeman had a lot more to say about the team and the actual game at his presser. If you didn’t catch it, here’s another chance to do so.