Rockne's Roundtable

Western Michigan or perhaps Navy under George Chaump. His Midshipmen teams were dreadful.

Irish brian,

Good one. Notre Dame could have hung 95 on SMU that year the way Houston did, but Lou Holtz gave strict orders in the fourth quarters for his players not to score (Rusty Setzer ran out of bounds at the 2 and ND then took delay of game penalties in the fourth quarter) — and then he was criticized for "point shaving" in the 59-6 win.

Here's the sad thing, though. USF didn't even start playing football until 1997 and didn't go Division 1-A until 2001 — and won last year in Notre Dame Stadium.

UConn didn't go Division 1-A until 2002 — but won in Notre Dame Stadium in 2009. In between, Tulsa also pulled a surprise in 2010.

I thought playing a 2-8 Syracuse team with a lame duck coach was about as boring as ou could get. Little did I know.....

Welcome aboard, irish brian -- keep posting!

This is one of the few times I will agree with you. This makes no sense to me at all. UMass??? We are talking about UMass right?? This is the kind of game the SEC teams schedule. Why on earth would you schedule this team? Come on guys Id love to get an SEC team scheduled or another team that is actually, well you know, GOOD. So yes IMO Pitiful is a very fitting word for this.

Maybe Molnar reached out and requested the game. They need teams to fill the schedule so we should see some interesting Non Conference games the first few years. I highly doubt Swarbick called UMass and asked for the game.