Tech-Notre Dame at the Georgia Dome?
South Bend, Ind.—Maria and I had a wonderful weekend here as we took part in the College Football Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremonies. A very impressive group of players, including UCLA’s Troy Aikman, Oklahoma State’s Thurman Thomas, and Florida State’s Ron Simmons (of Warner Robins, Ga.) were enshrined into the Hall of Fame. The coaches included Lou Holtz, who won a national championship at Notre Dame and finished his career at South Carolina, John Cooper, the first coach to take a Pac-10 team (Arizona State) AND a Big Ten team (Ohio State) to the Rose Bowl, and former Georgia head coach Jim Donnan, who went in as a member of the divisional class for his success at Marshall.
Here are just a few nuggets from the weekend that might interest you:
Georgia Tech and Notre Dame at the Georgia Dome? Gary Stokan, the much traveled president of the Atlanta Sports Council, was here over the weekend talking to Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick. The subject? Trying to get the globetrotting Fighting Irish to consider Atlanta for one of their neutral site games.
Notre Dame likes to play neutral site games in order to help recruiting. The Irish are playing Navy at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. in 2010, Baylor in New Orleans in 2012, and Arizona State in Arlington, Tex., in 2013. Today the school will announce that it will play Army at the new Yankee Stadium in 2010.
Stokan made the pitch for Notre Dame to consider Atlanta for one of these trips. The word I got here is that the Irish might consider it for a chance to play a Georgia Tech or an Alabama.
“For what Notre Dame wants to do with its schedule, this just makes sense,” said Stokan.
Tenuta takes over the ND defense: You’ll recall that former Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta landed at Notre Dame when Chan Gailey’s staff got let go after the 2007 season. He went to Notre Dame not as coordinator, but as an assistant head coach who worked with the linebackers. Corwin Brown was the defensive coordinator. This season, which is a crucial one for head coach Charlie Weis, Tenuta will be in charge of the Notre Dame defense. Brown remains on the staff as Associate Head coach and co-defensive coordinator but Tenuta will call the defenses. “Corwin is a great guy but Charlie had to make a tough call,” someone close to the program told me. “Tenuta is a great coach.”
Holtz headed to Japan: Anytime Lou Holtz is in South Bend he is the star attraction, and so it was Saturday night when he was enshrined into the College Football Hall of Fame. Holtz couldn’t talk a lot because his voice was raspy from yelling. Yes, yelling. Sunday morning Holtz took a group of former Notre Dame stars to Tokyo to play against the Japanese National team. The game will be on July 25. While Holtz was taking part in all of the Hall of Fame festivities, he was also sneaking away to the Notre Dame practice fields looking his potential team, some of whom are in their 40s, like former QB Tony Rice (who will turn 42 on Sept. 5). “Let’s put it this way,” Holtz said. “If Rudy comes back he is going to be our star.” Among the other people on Holtz’s coaching staff for this game will be former Georgia defensive coordinator and former Notre Dame assistant coach Bill Lewis.
Before the evening was over Holtz had everybody convinced that the Japan National Team was just a little bit better than Nebraska in 1995. Donnan would have none of it.
“Yeah, Lou really knows how to schedule,” Donnan said. “He should be able to beat Japan.”
Donnan humbled by enshrinement: Donnan won 64 games in six seasons as Marshall’s head coach. He won a Division I-AA national championship at Marshall in 1992 and played in a total of four national championship games. He had a 15-4 record in the playoffs and if you count his 4-0 bowl record at Georgia, Donnan has a career post-season record of 19-4. With his wife, Mary, and his children (Todd, Tammy, Paige) and grandchildren there to see it, no one enjoyed Saturday night’s enshrinement dinner than Jim Donnan.
“This puts a nice cap on my career,” said Donnan, who did not get back into coaching after he was released by Georgia after the 2000 season. “I hope the folks at Marshall and Georgia will look back and think that we did some nice things while we were there.”
Donnan still lives in Athens where he is involved in various business ventures. He has cut back on his television work because this fall he will be flying to Oklahoma to see one of his grandsons play football.
Will the Hall of Fame remain in South Bend? I have to give a lot of credit to the people of South Bend who put on quite a weekend for the Hall of Fame enshrinement. There is no question that the people of that community take a great deal of pride in having the Hall of Fame in their town. They made us all feel welcome.
But there are persistent rumblings that eventually the College Football Hall of Fame will relocate to a larger city where there is a guarantee of more traffic and exposure. The two leading cities, I’m told, are Atlanta and Dallas.
If it’s Atlanta, the goal would be to place the HOF near the Aquarium and the New World of Coca-Cola so that it would become a destination for out of town visitors, especially during the SEC championship game, the Chick-fil-A Bowl, and the Chick-fil-A kickoff. Dallas is also a player because of a powerful group that includes former Cowboys Roger Staubach, Deion Sanders, and Emmitt Smith plus billionaire T. Boone Pickens.
None of those talks, I’m told, has reached the serious stage. But based on what I saw this weekend, it is going to be hard to get the HOF out of South Bend.
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143 comments Add your comment
Long Dawg
July 20th, 2009
4:16 pm
Frankly I’d like to see a rule instituted that Division 1 schools can’t schedule division 1AA schools. Then tech wouldn’t start the season with Jax State and Georgia wouldn’t be playing Tenn Tech and Florida wouldn’t be playing Charleston Southern and Florida International.
As for the typical BS from St. Simons, M, Ramble On and this new whack job that calls himself Nachos I just want to share with you all once again Tech by the numbers:
0-#ACC Championships in last 10 years
0-#Costal division Championships in last 10 years
0-#of BCS bowl games played in in last 10 years
0-#of top 10 finishes last 10 years
1-#of wins over Georgia in last 8 years
2-#of Georgia turnovers that Tech needed to win
3-#of points tech scored on a 7 and 5 LSU team
4-#bowl games lost in a row by tech
5-#number of downs Reggie ball thought he had
6- Age of St Simons
7-#of points tech scored in 2002 51-7 beatdown
8-#of years before tech beats Georgia again
9-#of games tech has to win to reward themelves with a ring
10-#of season tickets sold to 2009 tech games
11- Age of m
12-IQ of nachos
13-Age of ramble on
Pat Dye
July 20th, 2009
4:17 pm
ND Dad,
The odds of making a td on 4th and 13 are 15% or less. If you wanted to win all you had to do is stop us when it counted.
Or, rather than kick 3 field goals yourself you could have gone for it on 4th down.
Or, you could have not held Tillman on 3rd down as the replay clearly showed.
Or, you should have just run the ball back for a td after they tying field goad. You had 2 seconds left. Waaaaaaa!
Just stating the facts.
Oklahoma colleges | Oklahoma Education
July 20th, 2009
4:34 pm
[...] Tech-Notre Dame at the Georgia Dome? | Mr. College FootballSouth Bend, Ind.—Maria and I had a wonderful weekend here as we took part in the College Football Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremonies. A very impressive group of players, including UCLA’s Troy Aikman, Oklahoma State’s Thurman Thomas, … read more… [...]
ND Dad, SU Grad
July 20th, 2009
4:34 pm
Pat Dye:
You tied us, we didn’t tie you…
P. S. – You should change your name to Pat Tye !!
Jaded Jacket
July 20th, 2009
4:35 pm
Tony, I’m glad you didn’t mention that Bill Lewis was also head coach at GT. He should have never left UGA. He ended up infecting our program for many years. He was horrible!
Dorsey Hill
July 20th, 2009
4:39 pm
Otto,
I never said that Penn State was in the Big East, I said that they were among the teams “in that region” that we have had trouble beating. Get a map.
I will note that Penn State applied for membership in the Big East that same season and they were rejected. If memory serves there was no Big East Football conference until the 1990’s or there about. So the BC and Pitt games were not against Big East opponents either, but those teams are also “in that region.”
My point was and is that we have had trouble beating anybody North of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Allgheny River. The last time might have been Yale in like 1932 or something.
Maybe you should look it up, Otto. But first, get a map.
Girl Jacket
July 20th, 2009
4:40 pm
Long Dawg, your name suggests you’re a Dachshund, not a Bulldog. How cute!
Dorsey Hill
July 20th, 2009
4:41 pm
Long Dawg,
Didn’t Tech lose to Wake Forest before a crowd of dozens in Jax for the ACC Chamionship? Think they did, so I think they do have one division title.
Long Dawg
July 20th, 2009
4:42 pm
Girl Jacket, some Dawgs are longer than others……
Long Dawg
July 20th, 2009
4:44 pm
Dorsey Hill, my bad. Yes I think you are correct. Then they went on to lose pretty bad in a bowl game.
JWalker
July 20th, 2009
4:49 pm
Tony, when you say “a Georgia Tech or an Alabama” you make it sound like they are in the same class/on the same level. That’s an insult to Alabama.
Tide Rising
July 20th, 2009
5:02 pm
Dorsey,
I just know that Penn State is north of Alabama, which is as you say the azz hole axis of the football universe. Are you still having problems with your complex regarding the Alabama football tradition?
Otto
July 20th, 2009
5:16 pm
Tide, I think he just has a complex in general.
gcs
July 20th, 2009
5:17 pm
Tony, why did Jim Donnan get out of coaching?
No comments from the peanut gallery please.
.
Mike T.
July 20th, 2009
5:37 pm
Georgee fans know that they own Tech.But your right Tech is of no national importance.
Mike T.
July 20th, 2009
5:44 pm
@Saint Simmons 42-45 a fluke! hahahahahahha! 4 months and eight days Tech”s losing string starts
again.
Tony Barnhart
July 20th, 2009
5:53 pm
gcs,
Jim Donnan had a couple of chances to get back into coaching. Kentucky came at him pretty hard when Guy Morriss left for Baylor. But Jim decided not to take that job and Kentucky hired Rich Brooks.
irish falcon
July 20th, 2009
6:26 pm
To all you dawg fans talking smack. Remember a couple years ago when Weiss and Richt went to Iraq. They talked about playing but the Ga. A.D. turned it down so you guys could keep playing those directional schools. I would say we’ll play in the BCS but you guys will lose at least four games and we will be undefeated. Don’t knock on Tech and Ala. for stepping up to play us considering those teams beat the snot out you last year.
ND in the house
July 20th, 2009
6:39 pm
Who is this fool dosey talkin bout owning ND head to head. 1-0. Son, you aint nothing to be even mentioning Georgia in the same breath as ND. We’ve been down this decade but the program was, is, and always will be Notre Dame. Who are you? We will play USC, ALabam, Ohio St., Michigan. We will not play you. You aint worthy. You just aint.
The Swarm
July 20th, 2009
6:43 pm
Granted the SEC is the cream of the crop as far as conferences go but UGA fans do you really want to blow hard about scheduling? Seriously you do? I mean it takes Uga 50 years to leave the south for a nonconference game and yall want to start boasting about non conf schedules. At tech we went home and home with ND, Auburn, AZ, Bc and Va when they werent in the acc, Byu, vandy, miss state all in the last 15 years or so. We even had Ole Miss on our schedule until they backed out along side Army last year, in turn the reason for a couple of our cupcakes. Every school has AT LEAST one cupcake nonconf most with TWO..no one ever really calls out FL when they play 2 or 3 cupcakes each year. What happened with UGA scheduling teams like Boise st or even Texas tech years ago, how come no return trip to places like that? Just straight up throw the money at them to come to Athens but no return trip to go to their place. And i give all credit for scheduling AZ state and Okie state, that took guts…but yall really want to stick your chest out after 50 years of cowardly non conf scheduling?? Maybe scheduling is why yall havent won a national championship in nearly 30 years…but according to virtually every loud moth Uga fan i’ve crossed paths with in the last 20 years “next year” is always the year the BULLDAWG NATION is gonna rise and win it all.
In all seriousness congratulations on it being July 20th and still no arrest for your football squad this year. This might be yalls year!!
junebaby
July 20th, 2009
6:45 pm
since uga fans don’t want to schedule any home games at the dome or anywhere in the atlanta area, i believe the kickoff games should continue. to heck with doing any favors for tech or the dawgs. they aren’t doing any favors for the city; tech with it’s losing ways, and uga fans with their plantation mentality. if they don’t want to play ball here, then why shouldn’t other teams benefit from the market? they’re like all the other entity’s in this state; take, take, take from atlanta, but never offer anything in return. nothing but insults and codewords.
Mike T.
July 20th, 2009
7:08 pm
Who are you to putting down Georgia? Most of Notre Dame success all through football history is
because of playing cupcakes and the benefit of northern yankee sports writers voting for them in
years in didn’t matter how many losses they had. Notre Dame most of the time when they come
South to play they usually get their head handed to them.SEC FOOTBALL TRADITION OR NOTRE DAME. SEC hands down.
Mike T.
July 20th, 2009
7:14 pm
I mean it takes Uga 50 years to leave the south for a nonconference game
Well in fifty years we’ve had some pretty good non conf come to play. Hey but what do you expect
we’re not an engineering school that had to have a decrease in stadium capacity. I guess Tech had to go on the road.
Atlanta Gator
July 20th, 2009
7:45 pm
Here’s the better question: Why the heck was the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana in the first place?
Yes, I know that Notre Dame is located there, but presumably the founders of the CFB HOF wanted visitors other than Notre Dame alumni to visit. South Bend is the epitome of the Midwestern Rust Belt. The local economy has been in reverse since Studebaker finally went the way of the dinosaur in 1964, and the biggest remaining industry in South Bend is Notre Dame.
On the flip side, the CFB HOF probably isn’t worth fighting over . . . and certainly not worth giving up tax revenue as any sort of incentive to move it here.
DaddyDawg
July 20th, 2009
8:05 pm
Whether it is GT or UGA, either team has to be careful about scheduling out of conference foes who simply want to come to Atlanta to get a toehold to recruit in Georgia. It’s no accident that Bama has decided to take on all comers in the Dome because they want to establish a permanent recruiting presence in Atlanta and the State of Georgia. For the same reasons, UGA has to be cautious about scheduling a “home and home” with schools outside the South because these schools will use the opportunity to develop a recruiting presence in Georgia. For example, if UGA were to schedule a “home and home” with Michigan, Michigan would have the chance to sink its teeth into the talent base in Georgia, but UGA couldn’t expect to benefit similarly by playing in Michigan. If recruiting is truly the lifeblood of a football program (and it is), you have to be careful with scheduling out of conference opponents if doing so will undercut your recruiting base in-state.
3>8
July 20th, 2009
8:20 pm
Tech/ND…their new coach can see his daughter while in town.
Paul The Vol
July 20th, 2009
8:22 pm
Tony, congratulations for winning the Bert McGrane award, the top award from the Football Writer’s Association of America. How was the ceremony? Was it a thrill to have your name enshrined in the Hall of Fame?
The best thing that could happen...
July 20th, 2009
8:32 pm
Is for the Irish to PACK the Dome! That would be awesome!
jay
July 20th, 2009
9:10 pm
College football Hall of Fame belongs in the south and preferably in or near an SEC city. The SEC IS college football.
TDone
July 20th, 2009
9:35 pm
Can we get a Mr. College Football link on the Tech page? There is one on the UGA page. Is this some type of alumni thing?
Tech-Notre Dame at the Georgia Dome? | Mr. College Football | Football Life
July 20th, 2009
9:51 pm
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SamoanDawg
July 20th, 2009
10:02 pm
Didn’t Damon Evans wanted to set up a games with ND few years ago? And how is it now that ND/GT are agreeing on sked? Hmmm? don’t make any sense to me. Sounds like ND is dodging the Dawgs. And don’t give me this neutral site excuse.. Atl is not a neutral playing field if ND/GT game falls thru, of course. Maybe Evans needs to sked ND neutral game at Carolina Panthers field. I want to play those leprechauns and beat’em!
James T
July 20th, 2009
10:13 pm
As long as Johnson is still at Tech if they play each other, or Saban is at Bama, then ND will get their asses beat to oblivion. Two great coaches against a school who has seen its prime come and gone. Urban Meyer could go there and still not get it done.
South Bend is a bitterly cold, small northern Indiana town. While academics are great, the weather, social lifestyle, including pretty women, are not recruiting strengths. A Southern Cal, Alabama, Texas, etc. can play their tradition while still having a solid recruiting base within a 6 hour drive from their campuses. Notre Dame cannot.
superDawg
July 20th, 2009
10:22 pm
OK so everybody knows you can forget records.gt if you want to know the truth think about how many times UGA has whipped your shiny yellow beehinds.
irish falcon
July 20th, 2009
10:51 pm
Hey SamoanDawg we tried to play the puppies but your boy Damon did not want to do it. The funny thing about Ga. fans is they claim how great they are and have not won a National Championship in almost 30 years. ND won more recently than Ga. It does not matter unless you are N. Champs. So you guys should just shut up and keep rooting for Fla. when they play titles.
Dan Barnett
July 21st, 2009
5:57 am
If Notre Dame thinks that playing these games is helping recruiting they’re fooling themselves as much as any team that says “playing on national tv” is helping recruiting when the national tv is the 12 noon game on espnu. Notre Dame obviously has a problem winning football games but is bolstered by its alumni and a sympathetic national media that remembers its glory days, but the athletic administration is drunk on the attention and thinks that notre dame is “america’s team”.
Not Disappointed
July 21st, 2009
9:21 am
Congrats again Tony. Would love to see GT and ND at the dome. GO Jackets!!
Sting 'em Buzz
July 21st, 2009
11:38 am
Long Dawg, the year of the Coastal Division Championship they lost each of their last three games by a field goal.
Cmill
July 21st, 2009
3:04 pm
GT can’t even fill up half of their stadium on their own, go ahead and install touchdown Jesus in the Georgia Dome, and a play like champions sign at entrances to every seating section.
GT and ND at Georgia Dome? - Notre Dame Football Discussion | Fighting Irish Forum
July 21st, 2009
5:31 pm
[...] and ND at Georgia Dome? Tech-Notre Dame at the Georgia Dome? | Mr. College Football Tony Barnhart, AJC 7/20 [quote] Georgia Tech and Notre Dame at the Georgia Dome? Gary Stokan, the [...]
Blackirish
July 27th, 2009
12:58 pm
Jimmy Clausen will lead ND to 10 wins this year, yes sireeeee el diablo is back with a vengeance….after this year nobody will want any part of scheduling the fire blowing fisheaters….
the smokin hot Irish return to stardom, the nation can now get some sleep!
ALA2262
July 29th, 2009
11:27 pm
Little problem there. Notre Dame doesn’t play neutral site games. Notre Dame plays off-site home games. BIG difference. It’s called money and TV rights for NBC (Notredame Broadcasting Company).
ALA2262
July 30th, 2009
7:55 am
Long Dawg. You weren’t paying attention when the 12th game was added to the schedule. On the EXACT same day that happened, the rule limiting 1A playing 1AA only once every 4 years was eliminated. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure what that was all about. It was to give 1AA schools a money game each year. They are getting it. They are going to continue to get it. EVERY year, so get over it.