Notre Dame finally learns its destination after a long wait
Notre Dame football lovers, I apologize. On Selection Sunday, the Revenge-a-Palooza Bowl versus former coach Brian Kelly and LSU was ruled out.
Instead, the 16th-ranked Irish (9-3) will go to El Paso, Texas, for the Sun Bowl. Notre Dame will face 19th-ranked Oregon State (8-4) on December 29 at 2 p.m.
Notre Dame will be making their second trip to the Sun Bowl. Kelly’s first season in South Bend finished with a 33-17 victory over Miami on New Year’s Eve, capping off an 8-5 season.
Oregon State is 2-0 all-time versus Notre Dame, defeating the Irish 41-9 in the Fiesta Bowl in 2001 and 38-21 in the Insight Bowl in 2004. Both games were held in the Phoenix metropolitan region.
This will be the 90th Sun Bowl, however it will be the first between ranked teams since 2008. The stadium’s seating capacity is 45,971; prior to reconfiguration, the 2010 game set a Sun Bowl attendance record of 54,021.
Marcus Freeman is 1-1 in bowl games as the head coach at Notre Dame. Last year, the Irish defeated South Carolina 45-38 in the Gator Bowl before falling 37-35 to Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl, which also marked Freeman’s debut as Kelly’s replacement.
Tommy Rees, a former Notre Dame quarterback and offensive coordinator, is returning to the College Football Playoff with No. 4 Alabama after defeating Georgia in the SEC Championship Game on Saturday.
Alabama’s victory set off a chain reaction that shattered widespread expectations of a Notre Dame-LSU slugfest in the ReliaQuest Bowl on New Year’s Day in Tampa. Instead, LSU will face Wisconsin (7-5), an unranked Big Ten participant.
The newly redesigned Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando was looking like a nice consolation reward until the selection committee left unbeaten Florida State out of the four-team playoff. That triggered a prolonged period of horse trading via conference call as the ACC bowl tie-ins (which include Notre Dame as a scheduling partner) were gradually ironed out.
Notre Dame & Oregon State will play in Sun Bowl, sources told @ActionNetworkHQ
Kickoff: Dec. 29 (Friday), 2 pm ET (CBS)
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— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 3, 2023
The helmets of seven ACC schools were shown on the dais in video from the Sun Bowl news conference: Boston College, Duke, North Carolina, N.C. State, Georgia Tech, Miami, and Virginia Tech.
The Sun Bowl was such an afterthought for three-loss Notre Dame that bowl organizers didn’t even have a legendary gold helmet to show off. The official announcement came at 5:50 p.m. Eastern, over three hours after the original bowl revelation on ESPN.
Following Jonathan Smith’s departure for Michigan State, Oregon State will have interim coach Kefense Hynson oversee the bowl game, with former defensive coordinator Trent Bray focused on his recruiting and staff-building duties as newly appointed head coach.
Meanwhile, Irish offensive coordinator Gerad Parker recently received a public vote of confidence from Freeman, who fired receivers coach Chansi Stuckey the next day after two seasons with the Irish. The transfer portal activity told a different story.
Six of the ten Irish players who have entered the transfer portal since the regular season finished with a 33-point win over Stanford were on the offensive side, including four receivers and offensive line starter Zeke Correll, who has started 31 games.
Twelve years of eligibility are gone for wideouts Chris Tyree (graduate), Tobias Merriweather (sophomore), Rico Flores Jr. (freshman), and Braylon James (freshman), as well as sophomore tight end Holden Staes.
Their combined 2023 output: 83 receptions for 1,348 yards and 10 touchdowns. Those totals represented 39.2%, 45.3% and 35.7% of Notre Dame’s regular-season production in those respective categories.
