Layden: Wisconsin-Notre Dame at Lambeau 'destined'
Tim Layden explains how over a century's worth of links makes it only right that Notre Dame and Wisconsin open their 2026 seasons at Lambeau Field.
Video Transcript
The University of Notre Dame and the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin are separated by 300 miles.
They are linked by a two-of-a-kind place in football history.
One, the smallest major league city in North America, a team owned by its citizens.
The other, a small Catholic college that became an unlikely pillar of the college game, a team owned by a nation of parishioners.
The connections run even deeper, cascading across generations.
Don't forget Madison.
We're gonna get 'em on a run.
We're gonna go, go, go, go.
Notre Dame was built on the genius of Knute Rockne- That's beyond five.
That's not home who coached a shifty halfback from Green Bay named Curly Lambeau, who went home, founded the Packers franchise, borrowed the Notre Dame colors, and coached running back Jim Crowley, who became one of Rockne's Four Horsemen, and who went on to coach Fordham University, where one of his seven blocks of granite was Vince Lombardi, whose legendary power sweep- It's a play that we will run again, and again, and again featured the golden boy, halfback Paul Hornung, who had won the Heisman Trophy at Notre Dame.
So it is that tonight the Fighting Irish meet Wisconsin, a program with its own deep connections to the Pack and Lambeau.
Together they connect the dots of football history.
One night a century in the making, destined to happen here.
