No. 9 Notre Dame will play arguably its most anticipated home game in years Saturday night when the No. 6 Ohio State Buckeyes come to South Bend.
While the Fighting Irish players and coaches are concerned with OSU’s on-field personnel, Notre Dame administrators have been focused on the Buckeyes’ fervent fan base.
Back in 2017, the Irish welcomed Georgia to Notre Dame Stadium, and what followed was a sea of red-clad Bulldogs fans taking over Rockne’s house. The scene left ND officials embarrassed, and they vowed not to have a repeat this time around.
Pete Sampson of The Athletic has produced a lengthy piece detailing everything that has gone into Notre Dame’s effort to keep Ohio State fans out.
By all accounts, it was a multi-pronged strategy, spearheaded by AD Jack Swarbrick and Patrick Nowlin, the school’s senior associate athletics director for business innovation and revenue generation.
One fix is as straightforward as making sure any returned tickets before the game don’t go up for public sale. Nowlin said any last-minute returned seats will go to Notre Dame season ticket holders or other fans connected to the school. He doesn’t expect any on Saturday, regardless.
The tougher nut to crack was getting into the heads of fans, understanding why they bought and when, and then figuring out how they sold and why. The first solution was moving up the date of purchase for season tickets. A call that went out in the summer for renewal should go out during the prior season, Wells said, giving fans a longer window to purchase and pay for tickets. In theory, that gives fans a chance to think more about season tickets, and season tickets are less likely to sell their seats to opposing fans.
Notre Dame also made getting season tickets the only guaranteed way one could secure tickets for the OSU game, and the school even limited the number of tickets that donors could purchase.
Additionally, ND has tried to spread the allotted 5,000 tickets that Ohio State received throughout the stadium so fans aren’t grouped together. Add in making it the program’s annual “Irish Wear Green” game and you can’t say the athletic department hasn’t pulled out all the stops.
We’ll see if all of these steps paid off three days from now. Notre Dame and Ohio State will kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET Saturday night on NBC.
Ohio State has won the last five meetings between the two storied programs dating back to 1995, including last year’s season opener in Columbus.