Earlier this week at his regular Monday press conference, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman left the door open for Notre Dame to wear their traditional blue home jerseys this weekend even though it is the yearly “Irish Wear Green” weekend. Freeman said he’d let the captains decide, and on Thursday, he confirmed that the captains decided to wear the green jerseys.
Notre Dame has worn green jerseys for the “Irish Wear Green” game every year since Marcus Freeman took over for Brian Kelly in 2022. Prior to Freeman’s promotion to head coach, Notre Dame held “Irish Wear Green” weekends without the team also wearing green, which always made very little sense.
It was surprising that Freeman said he was letting it up to the captains on Monday because even Freeman poked fun at the program for not wearing green previously while urging fans to do so in prior years.
Notre Dame is 1-1 in “Irish Wear Green” games under Freeman, with the win coming in 2022 against Cal. The loss came last year against Ohio State when the Irish infamously fielded just 10 players on the game’s final two plays and lost on a walk-off rushing touchdown.
Notre Dame introduced new home and away jerseys this year with a gold interlocking “ND” on the arms, so it’ll be interesting to see if they have a new version of their green alternate jersey as well, given they just introduced a new green variant in 2023. As an owner of the 2023 variant, I’m hopeful the green the Irish wear on Saturday hasn’t changed.
Last year, when the Irish wore green against Ohio State, they went full “green out” with green jerseys and pants. It’ll be interesting to see if they wear their normal gold pants or perhaps pair the green jerseys with the white pants we saw them wear in their “white out” look on the road at Clemson last year. The green jersey/white pants combo has the potential to look really sharp if they go that route.
This weekend’s contest with Louisville figures to be the biggest home of the year thanks to the full-scale implosion at Florida State this year. As a reminder, this weekend’s game is also only available streaming on the Peacock app so plan accordingly and avoid Twitter on gameday unless you want to see tweets from the pressbox before the streaming action is delivered to your TV.
I wish they’d go with a color scheme similar to the Green Bay Packers with maybe a touch of more gold than yellow. I like the tone of the Packers Green jerseys.
Curly Lambeau the founder of the Packers played for Rockne if anyone knows their history.