Notre Dame football bowl history: Every bowl game the Fighting Irish have played in
By Josh Yourish
There aren’t many years where the Notre Dame football team finds themselves left out of bowl season. They have appeared in 41 bowl games and 40 of those have come since New Year’s Day 1970.
The Fighting Irish have played to a record of 20-21 in bowl season with 11 claimed national championships, four of those clinched by bowl game wins (1924, 1973, 1977, 1988), but are 0-1 in BCS national championships and 0-2 in College Football Playoff games.
Even more than just making a bowl game appearance, 19 of their 41 appearances have been in the big four New Year’s Day bowl games; The Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Sugar Bowl.
The school’s longest streak of consecutive bowl appearances is nine straight and came from 1987-1995. The longest streak of bowl wins is three in a row, 1991, 1992, and 1993 with one Sugar Bowl and two Cotton Bowl victories.
In 2022, Marcus Freeman recovered from a slow start in his first season leading the Fighting Irish to lead the team to a 45-38 win over South Carolina in the Gator Bowl. Now, let’s dig into every bowl game appearance in the illustrious history of Notre Dame.