Looking ahead to a season full of familiar foes, we’re going to be taking some time this offseason to look at what happened the last time each of Notre Dame’s 2026 opponents met the Irish on the football field. Week two brings us to an opponent who isn’t scary, but also doesn’t feel totally safe due how to similar games have gone in recent seasons. Crank that time machine up because where last week took us back a mere five years, this week we’re going back twelve – to a time when your humble correspondent
was still an undergrad himself.
Week 2: Rice Owls
Last matchup: Aug. 30, 2014 – Notre Dame 48, Rice 17
The opener of a legendarily chaotic 2014 season didn’t exactly set the tone for what was to come, as it was a relatively breezy affair. Rice kept things somewhat interesting in the first half (it was just 14-10 Irish with 5:51 left before halftime), but the Irish then ripped off 27 straight points and ultimately handled the Owls with ease. Despite the dog-bites-man nature of the outcome, there were a few interesting narratives happening on the periphery of this game.
The season opened in the shadow of the “Frozen Five” scandal that broke a few weeks prior. That cursed affair saw five players suspended indefinitely as a result of academic misconduct whose sordid details I won’t get into on this family blog. The suspended players included projected #1 receiver Davaris Daniels, lockdown corner KeiVarae Russell, and a solid, veteran starting pass rusher in Ishaq Williams. There were real questions about whether the Irish would be able to show up and win, even against an overmatched foe, after not only losing key pieces but enduring the team-level fallout that always accompanies a scandal like this.
On the complete end of the heroic/villainous narrative spectrum, this game was a redemption story for quarterback Everett Golson, returning from his own academic suspension and an offseason spent…throwing footballs in the ocean? Being chased with brooms? Whatever George Whitfield did, it sure looked like it had worked against the Owls. It was the Everett Golson show, and boy did he make sure the show went on.
Golson finished with 295 yards passing and two touchdowns through the air, along with 41 yards rushing and three rushing touchdowns. Golson looked bigger, stronger, and more confident. He finally looked like the player Irish fans had longed to see emerge since 2012: an almost video-game-like combination of raw arm strength and pocket-passing skill with speed and shifty moves to spare on the ground, capable of making plays most quarterbacks would only attempt at extreme peril. This Golson, who we saw for much of the first half of the season, might have been the most effective Notre Dame quarterback I’ve ever seen. Now as for what happened later on…that’s not for this article to discuss.
A couple other personal notes that make this one fun to look back on:
- It was my junior year, and it is a scientific fact that the fall semester of junior year is the best semester of college. Don’t fight me on this. In any case, I always look back on games from the 2014 season with fondness for this reason – despite how weird it got in November. The only thing that was kind of a bummer about that time for me was that one of my best friends was studying abroad, but he actually got to come back to campus for this game as his semester in Rome hadn’t started yet. A great weekend in every respect.
- A few years later I met James Hairston, Rice’s kicker in this game, as he served as an usher in my sister’s wedding. A good friend of my brother-in-law, he was eager to find me and tell me how proud he was to have played and scored points in Notre Dame Stadium – on his first collegiate kick no less!
Perhaps not quite as a cathartic as last week, but still a fun game to look back on. Full highlights below:
