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More Notre Dame Sports
Notre Dame women's basketball — two banners
1977 – present
The program: Women's basketball at Notre Dame dates its varsity record to 1977; the program marked its fiftieth season in 2026–27. Its home is Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center.
Notre Dame men's basketball — the Phelps era and the Joyce Center
1927 – present
The early titles: Before the NCAA tournament existed to settle it, Notre Dame was named national champion by the Helms Foundation for 1927 and 1936. Those selections stand in the program's record as its pre-tournament titles.
Notre Dame fencing — sixteen national titles
1977 – present
The accounting: Notre Dame's fencing program is, with Columbia, the most successful in the NCAA record: sixteen national championships. The count reconciles exactly. Men's titles: 1977, 1978, 1986. Women's title: 1987. In the…
Notre Dame hockey — from the Joyce ice to Compton
1912 – present
The origins: Hockey at Notre Dame began as a club sport in 1912–13; the first official game in the program's history came in February 1928, against Michigan. The varsity program dates to 1968, built by coach Charles "Lefty"…
Notre Dame baseball — the Omaha trips
1892 – present
The program: Notre Dame has sponsored baseball since the nineteenth century, and its record holds no national championship — its summit is Omaha, reached three times. The Irish have played in three College World Series: 1957…
The night the streak died: Notre Dame 71, UCLA 70
January 19, 1974 · the Athletic and Convocation Center
The game: Team histories belong to Sports and the team legs; this game belongs here, where Sports itself assigns it — a single night that the city remembers as an event. Top-ranked UCLA, 13–0, winners of eighty-eight straight…
Notre Dame's fifty: the College Hall players, enumerated
Classes of 1951 – 2025
The count is an enumeration, not a slogan. The National Football Foundation's own published count, through the class of 2025, gives Notre Dame fifty Hall of Fame players — the most of any school, Southern California next at…
The six coaches
Classes of 1951 – 2008
Six Notre Dame coaches stand in the College Hall, and the Foundation's standing for them is printed at its exact strength: six is not the most. The Foundation's count through the class of 2025 gives Ohio State eight Hall of Fame…
Canton: Notre Dame's fourteen in the Pro Football Hall of Fame
Classes of 1963 – 2022
The second hall is in Canton, Ohio, and it is boundary enough to say so once: the Pro Football Hall of Fame is Canton's institution, and South Bend's claim on it runs through the same university. Notre Dame's men in Canton…
The Canton ties, tested one by one
Lambeau, McNally, Trafton, Connor — at exact strength
Curly Lambeau played one season on this ground, and it is the whole of his tie. Earl "Curly" Lambeau of Green Bay came to Notre Dame in 1918 and made the varsity as a freshman fullback on Knute Rockne's first team; the South Bend…
Clashmore Mike: the animals of Notre Dame's sideline
1924 to the 1960s
The terriers: The animals of civic record in this county belong, by documentary weight, to a football team. For more than forty years the University of Notre Dame's mascot was a living Irish terrier, and the university's own…
"Notre Dame invented the forward pass" — the 1913 Army game
In civic circulation since the Rockne era · Tested in full in the Notre Dame Football file
The claim. The best-known football claim in the city: that Notre Dame invented the forward pass, or revealed it to the nation, in the 35–13 defeat of Army at West Point on 1 November 1913, when Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais threw…
"More players in the College Football Hall of Fame than any other school"
Claimed for Notre Dame · Tested by enumeration in the Halls of Fame file
The claim. That Notre Dame has placed more players in the College Football Hall of Fame than any other school. It is the rare superlative that can be tested by counting, and the Halls of Fame file counted it.
"Eleven national championships" — a number that is a convention
The university's conventional count · The mechanisms printed in the Notre Dame Football file
The claim. Notre Dame claims eleven consensus national championships in football. The number is on banners, in broadcasts and in the city's own telling of itself, and it is the kind of claim that dissolves or firms depending on…
Win One for the Gipper: The Growth of a Sentence
1920–1940 · the tale in its two printings and its film
The boundary: The game, the speech as an event of 10 November 1928, and the evidence weighed as fact stand in this history's Notre Dame Football section. What stands here is the sentence's second life — the way a halftime story…