Notre Dame vs. Navy game officially canceled with ACC decision

Notre Dame football will not play Navy football at Annapolis this season.

It sure looks like Notre Dame football won’t play Navy football during the 2020 college season.

With the Notre Dame Fighting Irish joining the ACC as semi-full-time football members for the 2020 season, this means the Irish are subject to the rules and regulations of how ACC Football will be played this year. Notre Dame will get a full, 10-game ACC schedule, but will have to split its NBC contract television money with the 14 other ACC institutions. There’s also the plus-one thing.

Of all the stipulations in the ACC’s solid plan to play some college football this fall, the strangest wrinkle is how the plus-one, non-conference game will work. All 15 ACC teams this year can play a non-conference game, as long as that game is played in the same home state of the team in question. So if a team were to play Notre Dame out of the ACC, they’d have to come to Indiana.

For that reason, we can reasonably speculate that the Fighting Irish won’t play the Navy Midshipmen out of The American this season. This game was originally going to be played in Dublin, Ireland, but you know, COVID-19 happened. It was moved to the Midshipmen’s home turf in Annapolis, Maryland, a state where Notre Dame is forbidden to play this year.

Would the Midshipmen be willing to play the Irish in South Bend this fall?

Navy is one of Notre Dame’s oldest rivals. The Irish and the Midshipmen have played 102 times, with Notre Dame being the hammer in the rivalry to Navy’s nail. Notre Dame has a massive 77-13-1 all-time series lead over Navy, including a 43-game winning streak over the Midshipmen from 1964 to 2006. The Irish have won the three most recent meetings over Navy.

So for this annual rivalry that has been played every year since 1927 to have a 2020 game, it would have to be played in Notre Dame’s home state of Indiana. This could mean Navy comes to South Bend to play the Irish or it could mean a potential neutral-site affair at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. That’d be cool if the NFL‘s Indianapolis Colts could find a way to make this work.

When the ACC said a non-conference game must be played within the borders of the team in question’s state, it had to think Notre Dame may want to find a way to play Navy, whether that’s in South Bend or in Indianapolis. While the rivalry can continue, it won’t be played in Annapolis this year. Technically, the game has been canceled, but it can evolve in the coming weeks.

Notre Dame will not play Navy in Annapolis, Maryland this season, per the ACC’s 2020 rules.

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