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Facilities
Notre Dame Stadium
At every Notre Dame home game, 80,795 screaming fans await the entrance of the Notre Dame football team while chanting, "Here come the Irish!" The current football players run through the same tunnel that Notre Dame legends Joe Montana, Jerome Bettis and Tim Brown all ran through - and onto the field once patrolled by Knute Rockne, Ara Parseghian and Lou Holtz. Notre Dame Stadium was built in 1930 during the Knute Rockne era. It was the success of Knute's football teams that built the foundation and the lore of the stadium. The spirit that was imbued by the Rockne era - and has been sustained by seven Heisman trophy winners and dozens more All-Americans who have competed on that turf - has changed little in eight decades of football at Notre Dame Stadium. The Osborn Engineering Company, which had designed more than 50 stadiums in the country-including Comiskey Park in Chicago, Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds in New York City, and facilities at Michigan, Indiana, Purdue and Minnesota-was awarded the contract and excavation, began that summer. The Stadium measures a half-mile in circumference, stands 45 feet high and features a glass-enclosed press box rising 60 feet above ground level and originally accommodating 264 writers plus facilities for photographers and radio and television broadcasters. There are more than 2,000,000 bricks in the edifice, 400 tons of steel and 15,000 cubic yards of concrete. The total cost of construction exceeded $750,000, and architecturally the Notre Dame Stadium was patterned, on a smaller scale, after the University of Michigan's mammoth stadium. Though Rockne had a chance to coach in the new facility only in its initial season of use, he took a personal hand in its design. The sod from Cartier Field was transplanted into the new Stadium, but Rockne insisted on its use for football only. He kept the area between the field and the stands small to keep sideline guests, as he called them, to a minimum - and he personally supervised the parking and traffic system that basically is the same one in use today. Notre Dame Stadium, may be the most renowned college football facility in the nation, now qualifies as one of the most up to date as well, thanks to a major addition and renovations that boosted its capacity to more than 80,000 beginning with the 1997 campaign. The 1996 season was the final one played with the customary 59,075 fans at Notre Dame Stadium. A $50-million expansion adding over 21,000 seats was completed before the 1997 season kickoff. To upgrade on the 1997 renovation, two new scoreboards were installed in both end zones before the 2009 season that utilize the latest in LED-screen technologies.
Elements of the construction included: Casteel Construction Corp. of South Bend was the general contractor for the project. Ellerbe Becket, Inc., of Kansas City, Mo., was the architect. The project was financed primarily by the November 1994 issuance of $53 million in tax-exempt, fixed-rate bonds. The bonds were sold in 26 states and the District of Columbia, with more than 20 percent sold to retail buyers and almost 80 percent to institutional buyers. The incremental revenues from the expansion will exceed the debt service on the bonds by $47 million over the next 30 years, allowing the project not only to pay for itself, but also to generate $47 million for academic and student life needs. Entering 2009, the Irish have played 405 games inside Notre Dame Stadium and compiled a 302-98-5 (.752) record. Notre Dame has also played before a sellout crowd at Notre Dame Stadium in 205 consecutive games, entering the 2009 season. Since 1966, every Notre Dame home game has been a sellout except one - a Thanksgiving Day game vs. Air Force. The Irish have played host to 62 different opponents in games at Notre Dame Stadium and no school that has made at least four trips to South Bend owns a winning record against the Irish at Notre Dame Stadium.
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