While most college football teams attempt to limit distractions during a typical game week - hence the tightly controlled media availability by many progams (not saying, just saying) - less than a week after Notre Dame announced its impending move to the ACC in all sports except for football and men's hockey, more news broke on the Irish as they prepare to face Michigan on Saturday in South Bend, Ind.
Not bad news, either. The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that Notre Dame and Connecticut are in negotiations to play a football game at Fenway Park in Boston but Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick dismissed those reports.
"We have work to do on our future football schedules, given the announcement last week relative to our upcoming Atlantic Coast Conference relationship," Swarbrick said in the statement. "However, media reports today that we will play Connecticut in Fenway Park in 2014 are inaccurate."
However, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly was open to the possibility of playing football in a baseball stadium.
“I think it would be cool,” Kelly said. “I’d like to do it. More than anything else, I don’t know the ramifications of the 2014 schedule as it relates to the ACC schedule.”
Fenway Park hasn't hosted a football game since 1968, but there's nothing unusual about the venerable baseball stadium hosting non-baseball events. Recently it's hosted Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews Band and Jimmy Buffett, and has also hosted pro soccer and outdoor hockey games, including the 2010 Winter Classic. Here's a pic I took when I covered the Winter Classic that year:
A regulation NHL rink is 200 feet long by 85 feet wide, while a football field is 100 yards long (360 feet) by 53 1/3 yards (160 feet) wide. Which could pose a logistical problem. Which did pose a logistical problem at Wrigley Field in Chicago when Northwestern played Illinois in 2010.
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