Notre Dame and Army meet at Yankee Stadium under historic circumstances 

Their names are synonymous with college football’s romanticized halcyon era. Two of the sport’s undisputed powers when images — still and moving — were shot in black-and-white. Back when feats of athletic excellence were chronicled in newspapers, radio broadcasts and film reels instead of being instantly clipped and turned into GIFs shared on the internet in roughly the same amount of time it takes to read this sentence.

Army. Notre Dame.

The two historically significant programs came together at Yankee Stadium on Saturday night in the first truly meaningful game between the teams in decades, a long post-pattern from the hallowed ground where their ancestors collided long ago.

“It’s an honor,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said near the end of his media availability Monday. “When [since-retired athletic director] Jack Swarbrick told me this was going to be our Shamrock Series game for this year, the first thought was, ‘Navy and Army in the same year? Come on, Jack.’ Then he told me why.”

The why is that the game also was the centennial celebration of Notre Dame’s 13-7 win over Army at the Polo Grounds, which was immortalized thusly by Grantland Rice of the-then New York Herald Tribune on Oct. 18, 1924:

“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: [Harry] Stuhldreher, [Don] Miller, [Jim] Crowley and [Elmer] Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.

“A cyclone can’t be snared. It may be surrounded, but somewhere it breaks through to keep on going. When the cyclone starts from South Bend, where the candle lights still gleam through the Indiana sycamores, those in the way must take to storm cellars at top speed.’’

The Irish finished that season with a 10-0 record and won the first of their record 11 national championships. Army ended at 5-1-2.

Yes, you could say it was an important contest. So, too, was the one their descendants played Saturday night. Both teams entered the game ranked in The Associated Press poll for the first time since 1958. Army (9-0) is No. 18 and Notre Dame (9-1) is ranked No. 6.

“For our players, the first time they ever put shoulder pads on and decided they were going to play football I think they likely hoped they would have an opportunity to play in a game like this, in this kind of venue against one of the blue blood football programs in the country,” Army coach Jeff Monken said Tuesday. “It is exciting.”

For many reasons, not the least of which is that the Black Knights had an opportunity to do something for the first time in 66 years: Beat Notre Dame.

Army’s last win over the Irish came on Oct. 11, 1958, a 14-2 win in South Bend. Since that game, Notre Dame had won 15 straight and had a record of 39-8-4 against Army entering Saturday.

“There’s a great history to this game,” Monken said. “The history belongs to Notre Dame. They’ve won most of them.”

Yet Monken and Freeman both stressed that the 2024 iteration of the Black Knights is not a fluke. Army entered the game averaging 35.2 points and 419.9 yards of offense and had held opponents to 10.3 points — tied for tops in the nation with Ohio State — and 273.9 yards.

“This is a good — really good — football team,” Freeman said. “They play hard. They take care of the football. They keep the ball away from you. They take the ball from you.”

Notre Dame entered outscoring opponents by an average of 26.6 points (38.0 versus 11.4) and outgaining them by 138.6 yards (415.7 versus 277.1).

“My mentor and former head coach Paul Johnson always said, ‘They got 22 Parade All-Americans,’ ” Monken said. “We got 22 guys who marched in a parade.”