12 days until Notre Dame football: The Irish did this a dozen times in 2023

BlueandGold.com will release a countdown article highlighting a significant Notre Dame football statistic every day until the 2024 season opener at Texas A&M at 7:30 p.m. ET on Aug. 31 in College Station, Texas. Today, there are 12 days until the Irish and Aggies kick off at Kyle Field.

Notre Dame played in front of a capacity crowd in 12 of 13 games in 2023. The only time the stadium was not completely full for a Fighting Irish game last season was the regular season finale at Stanford when a reported 30,901 were on hand to witness Notre Dame crush the Cardinal, 56-23.

Every Irish home game was a sellout for the first time since 2018.

The university announced on Monday that three Notre Dame home games are already sold out. Those are the matchups against Miami (Ohio) on Sept. 21, Louisville on Sept. 28 and Florida State on Nov. 9. The Irish also have home games at the House That Rockne Built against Northern Illinois on Sept. 7, Purdue on Sept. 14 and Stanford on Oct. 12.

The Irish begin the 2024 season at Texas A&M on Aug. 31. There should be a capacity crowd on hand at Kyle Field, one of the largest stadiums in college football. The College Station, Texas, venue officially seats 102,733. Country music legend George Strait recently held a concert there this summer with an announced attendance of 110,905.

There will be games on this fall’s Notre Dame schedule that have a tough time drawing half as many people as that. Purdue’s Ross-Ade Stadium holds 61,441, for example. Fighting Irish faithful might need to flock to West Lafayette in droves to bring that game’s crowd to capacity.

Notre Dame fans are also going to need to pull a lot of weight in filling up Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta when the Irish face off against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets there on Oct. 19. The venue, completed and opened in 2017, officially holds between 71,100 and 75,000 for American football, but the all-time record attendance was 79,330 for the 2022 Peach Bowl between Georgia and Ohio State. The Bulldogs won in a thriller, 42-41.

It’ll also be interesting to see how many people come out for Notre Dame’s two games in the New York City area. The Irish play Navy at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Oct. 26. They play Army at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 23. The capacity for football games at Yankee Stadium is 54,251.

The only neutral site game — in addition to the Sun Bowl in El Paso — Notre Dame had in 2023 was the season opener at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, which was unsurprisingly packed from field level to the top row. This year, Irish fans are tasked with getting to NYC and Atlanta to continue an impressive run of filling up stadiums for Notre Dame games.

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