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Nearly 60 years have passed since a Boston College football player last placed a cleated foot on the sacred turf of Fenway Park, so when the Eagles return to America’s oldest major league ballpark for a game against Notre Dame on the evening of Nov. 21, it’s going to be a big deal.
And it’s not even going to be BC’s home game. The contest will be part of Notre Dame’s “Shamrock Series” that has brought a Fighting Irish home game into major market sports facilities around the country each year since 2009.
That means that only 5,000 of the 37,673 seats in Fenway will be allocated to BC fans, with the rest sold by the Golden Domers. As any economics student at either school knows, the old rule of supply and demand controls ticket availability.
“This is one of the highest [ticket] demand games that we have ever had,” notes Assistant Athletics Director for Ticket Sales Jim O’Neill. “When you take in the fact that it’s Notre Dame and BC is playing them in our city; when you take in the fact that there are only 37,000 seats; and when you take in the fact that it’s at Fenway Park, which is a unique experience in itself, it’s been a highly-demanded ticket.
“Everything is gone.”
O’Neill predicts that Fenway will provide “a great environment” for the game, which starts at 7:30 p.m. “There will be a lot of excitement and with the great year that Notre Dame is having, this is the type of game that could really make a season for us.”
A look at some Fenway and Notre Dame-related lore in BC football history:
The 102nd Game
The Boston College football team once joined the Boston Red Sox as a prime tenant at Fenway. The Eagles played at the Olde Towne Ballpark for the first time in 1914 when Fenway was just two years old and team owners were seeking additional revenue. BC beat Norwich 28-6 and Catholic University 14-0 in the first two college games at the park. Over the ensuing 42 years, BC played 101 games on Lansdowne Street – winning 75 of them, losing 21 and five ending in tie scores.
The Eagles’ last appearance at Fenway was a 7-0 loss to former arch-rival Holy Cross on Dec. 1, 1956. The late-game winning touchdown set off a small riot as celebrating Crusader fans tore down the steel goalposts, set fires to bales of hay surrounding the playing field and wreaked general havoc in the stadium.
Farewell to Fenway
Midway through the 1956 season, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey told Boston College officials that the football team was tearing up Fenway’s turf and college football would no longer be permitted. Then-BC Athletics Director John P. Curley cited “Tom Yawkey’s intentions to reseed the park after the 1957 baseball season. In that event there will no more football games at the park. It is evidently Mr. Yawkey’s intention to have one of the best-looking ballparks in the league.”
BC officials mulled dropping varsity football when Fenway was yanked away. The cost of enlarging the old Alumni Field (located at the current site of Stokes Hall on Middle Campus) was considered prohibitive.
Instead, BC alumni banded together to launch a lightning-like development drive to raise $350,000 to build a new, 26,000-seat football facility on the current site of Alumni Stadium – a campaign that saved the sport of football at Boston College.
The new Alumni Stadium was ready for the start of the 1957 football season on Sept. 21.
Lay of the Land
When fans arrive at Fenway for the BC-Notre Dame game, they will see that the football field runs counter to the traditional north-to-south direction, stretching east to west from the home plate area to the right field wall.
Because of the low box seats on the first base side of the field, both teams will share a sideline in front of the left-field “Green Monster” wall.
Fashion Statement
Both Boston College and Notre Dame will have special uniforms supplied by UnderArmour for the game: the Irish will wear green uniforms matching the famous paint hue of the old park; Boston College will dress in throwback uniforms from the 1984 Cotton Bowl championship season, when Eagle quarterback Doug Flutie won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s top player. (Flutie will be at the game – as an NBC television analyst commenting on the game for viewers at home.)
Notre Dame has worn the green football uniforms (in lieu of their traditional blue and gold togs) only one previous time against Boston College: in 2002, when Notre Dame was 8-0 and was ranked No. 4 in the national polls when the Eagles visited South Bend for a Nov. 2 game. BC, bolstered by a massive defensive effort, upset the heavily-favored Irish by a 14-7 score, and Notre Dame officials wisely placed the green uniforms in mothballs until this year’s game.
On the Road
Notre Dame’s “Shamrock Series” has brought the Irish team to such venues as New York’s Yankee Stadium (vs. Army), the HoosierDome in Indianapolis (vs. Purdue), and Soldier Field in Chicago (vs. Miami).
In addition to the game, the ND Alumni Association sets up educational seminars and social functions for alumni and friends of the school, as well as the brand-conscious “Notre Dame Bookstore Annex” that will sell everything from traditional t-shirts and hats to Christmas decorations and other specialty items as part of the university’s constant marketing effort.
To the Victor
The winner of each Boston College–Notre Dame football game gets to keep the “Frank Leahy Award,” named in honor of the College Football Hall of Fame coach who directed the program at both schools (Boston College from 1939-40 and Notre Dame from 1941-53) and won multiple national championships and honors. The Leahy Award is a punch-bowl size Waterford Crystal trophy that was originally sponsored by the Notre Dame Alumni Club of Boston when the teams met for the first time in 1975.
Since that first game that was played in Foxboro before a national television audience, Notre Dame has won 13 of 22 games against the Eagles.