Notre Dame Football: Irish and Badgers should play on campuses

The Notre Dame football program welcomes Wisconsin to the schedule in 2020 and 2021, with both games scheduled to play at neutral sites.

Notre Dame football will travel to Lambeau Field in Green Bay to play Wisconsin Badgers in 2020. The game is set for a 7:30 kickoff on October 3rd. In addition, the two schools are set to play at Chicago’s Soldier Field in 2021.

But recently, there has been speculation about whether those games will go off as scheduled. Give the complications facing the college football season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rumblings are that the scheduled Lambeau Field site may be re-evaluated. However, another report came out from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that seems to refute that report.

While it’s hard to tell what will happen for this game, it’s not difficult to decide what should happen for this game: Notre Dame and Wisconsin should play on each other’s respective campuses in a traditional home-and-home series.

I’m probably not the first to discuss this, nor will I be the last. But in the case of this agreement between the Irish and the Badgers, it simply seems that there is a lot of over-thinking when it comes to the location of the games.

Notre Dame is a destination venue for many college football fans. Love Notre Dame or hate Notre Dame, most people would tell you that they would like to see a game there. Those that have usually discuss the hospitality of Notre Dame fans, the overall game atmosphere, and the beautiful campus and gameday amenities. In short, Notre Dame is a great place to watch college football.

And while I personally have never seen a game at Wisconsin, it’s easy to tell that Camp Randall Stadium lives up to its billing as another great venue for college football.

It just doesn’t make sense that two schools with storied venues and great atmospheres for college football don’t get the opportunity to host those games. Again, as was said earlier, it just seems like this decision was over-thought.

Unfortunately, wherever this game is played in 2020, it probably will be in front of a much smaller crowd, which is likely part of the reason for speculating that the venue could be moved. Regardless, a smaller crowd is probably another reason the game should be moved, as it would seem that a campus atmosphere would make up for the smaller number of fans.

If there’s any snag in the plans to play these two games at the scheduled neutral sites, both schools shouldn’t hesitate to move these games back to the respective campuses, which would mean playing South Bend in 2020 and Madison in 2021, per the terms of the contract. College football is better on college campuses, especially for schools like Notre Dame and Wisconsin.