Notre Dame is college football’s ultimate bellwether, the program that everyone wants to succeed against because of its storied tradition, pageantry and national brand recognition.
For that reason, some 35,000 NC State supporters invaded Jacksonville, Florida, after Christmas in 2002 to see the No. 17 Wolfpack face the No. 11 Fighting Irish on New Year’s Day at the Gator Bowl. They saw that day a total dismantling of the Irish, who at the time were being led by Tyrone Willingham, a former NC State assistant.
Alltel Stadium, as it was then called, was bright red throughout the game, almost as red-faced as their opponent’s leprechaun mascot was after the thorough 28-6 beat down that started when linebacker Dantonio “Thunder Dan” Burnette knocked Notre Dame quarterback Carlyle Holliday out of the game in the first quarter.
The Wolfpack defense dug in that day on a pair of goal-line stands and did not allow college football’s biggest name in the end zone the entire game.
After three consecutive late-season losses following a 9-0 start, the Wolfpack had redeemed itself by holding both Florida State and the Irish without a touchdown for 12 consecutive quarters to finish the season with a school-record 11 victories. The next day, junior quarterback Philip Rivers was splashed across the front page of USA Today, and the Pack finished with a No. 12 ranking in the final Associated Press poll.
It is the second highest finish in school history after the 1974 team (9-2-1) was ranked No. 11 in the final media poll and No. 9 in the final coaches poll.
Last year, while Hurricane Matthew rolled through the Triangle, the Wolfpack beat the Fighting Irish again, 10-3, on the day Carter-Finley Stadium turned 50 years old.
Players splashed in celebration while enough hearty fans stuck around to drown out the swirling winds in celebrating the second consecutive win over the Irish.
That victory put the Wolfpack in elite company. Since 1900, only two other schools, Georgia and Oregon State, have multiple wins over Notre Dame without a loss. (Chicago, which dropped out of major college football in 1939, won all four of its games against the Irish, all of which were played prior to 1900.)
Seven other schools have won their only game against college football’s second-winningest program after Michigan, upping the total to 11 schools with perfect records against the Irish.
A win Saturday when the No. 14 Wolfpack makes its first ever visit to Notre Dame Stadium to face the No. 9 Irish would put the Pack into another set of elite company. Michigan won its first eight games against the Irish, while Chicago is a perfect 4-0. Both Iowa and Wisconsin won their first three games against the Irish before eventually suffering their first losses in the series.
For the Wolfpack, maintaining that winning streak might well put the program into the Top 10, where it has not been since Oct. 28, 2002, after it beat Clemson in Death Valley to improve its record to 9-0 for the first time in school history and rise to No. 10 in the Associated Press poll.
The Pack has been in the Top 10 only twice — the other was the 1974 season — since Earle Edwards took the program to its highest ranking ever, exactly 50 years ago this season when the Pack rose to No. 3 weeks after No. 2 Houston at the Astrodome.
And here’s something that might help the Wolfpack in that quest: two of the last three Power Five teams who won in their debut appearance in South Bend, Louisville in 2014 and Virginia Tech in 2016, are part of the same ACC package of nonconference games against the Irish.
The other team, Georgia in 2017, is one of the teams that is also 2-0 against the Irish.
Burnette, now in his third year as the Wolfpack’s strength and conditioning coach under head coach Dave Doeren, will get plenty of attention this week in reliving his hit on Holliday, a play that would likely be on Wolfpack football’s Mount Rushmore, along with Torry Holt’s punt return against Florida State in 1998, Danny Peebles’s touchdown pass from Erik Kramer against South Carolina in 1986 and Dick Christy’s field goal against the Gamecocks to finish off his 29-point scoring performance in 1957.
He’s quite used to it.
“Every year, anytime we go to any kind of event, people want to talk about the play against Notre Dame,” Burnette said. “It never gets old.”
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