The season-opening game at Lambeau Field in 2016 was such a success, that the home team wants to do it all over again.
Actually...make that both home teams.
Last September, the Wisconsin Badgers “hosted” the LSU Tigers at Lambeau, home of the Green Bay Packers, defeating the SEC West foe 19-14 on the way to a Cotton Bowl victory and a top-10 finish in the season’s final polls. By all accounts, the game was a massive success.
On Monday, the Chicago Tribune reported that the Wisconsin athletic department is in talks for another neutral-site football series with a prominent out-of-conference opponent: the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The report indicated that Lambeau Field and Chicago’s Soldier Field are the targeted venues; later in the afternoon Packers president Mark Murphy confirmed that discussions are indeed underway to hold one of the games at Lambeau. “I would say we’ve been working on that for awhile,” Murphy said (via Packer Report). “Hopefully very soon we’ll be able to make an announcement.”
If this comes to fruition, it would be the third game involving a Wisconsin men’s varsity sport to play at Lambeau since 2006; the other was the Frozen Tundra Hockey Classic, which saw the Badgers’ men’s hockey team defeat the Ohio State Buckeyes 4-2 in 2006.
This series would be an easy sell for both fan bases; the city of Chicago is filled with alumni of both schools, while Green Bay is about a five hour drive from South Bend, Indiana (depending on Chicago traffic). Another added historical bonus is the Packers’ historical connection to the Fighting Irish; the Packers’ initially wore blue and gold as a tribute to Notre Dame’s uniforms because team founder Curly Lambeau had attended the university.
Stay tuned for more details and projected dates, but football fans in the Midwest should start getting excited about the prospect of another thrilling college football game at the greatest pro football stadium on Earth.