How Notre Dame Plans to Create a Raucous Playoff Atmosphere

Notre Dame MUST create a wild environment and maximize the home game.

Nov 23, 2024; New York, New York, USA; The Notre Dame Fighting Irish mascot performs for fans during the second half against the Army Black Knights at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Danny Wild-Imagn Images / Danny Wild-Imagn Images

For the first ever on-campus College Football Playoff games, you better believe Notre Dame will, or should, be pulling out all of the stops to make the environment favor the Fighting Irish as much as possible.

This is an unprecedented scenario for Notre Dame and all of the other schools that earned the opportunity to host a first-round playoff game at home. The advantage of playing at home, rather than at a neutral site or even away is massive and the Notre Dame brass is well aware of what it must do to make the Indiana Hoosier team and fans as uncomfortable as possible.

Notre Dame vs. Indiana: Keep Hoosiers out of Notre Dame Stadium

It starts with allowing the absolute least amount of Hoosier fans into the stadium as possible, which Notre Dame seems to be doing well so far. It has been reported that the game was sold out before hitting the secondary market, meaning there were no tickets readily available for Indiana fans to buy without going through Notre Dame or someone who already bought tickets.

In short, IU got their standard 3,500 seat allotment and there may be a few hundred tickets left out there over $800. If an Indiana fan wants to pay that, fine, but don't expect there to be a "red takeover" like many are suggesting on social media.

Notre Dame’s home College Football Playoff game against Indiana is officially sold out. Tickets never went to market … which was the case for Ohio State last year. Secondary market currently at Swift levels. pic.twitter.com/HAY1RmaPOW

— Pete Sampson (@PeteSampson_) December 9, 2024

The first step was of course limiting the Indiana fans and getting as many Notre Dame fans into the seats as possible. That *looks* to be roughly complete.

Next, keep the fans energy as high as possible throughout the entire game. That means good in-stadium music, some pump-up videos, a couple guest appearances/speakers during timeouts, stuff like that.

PLEASE none of the normal terrible music and interviews with children who have no idea what is going on.

Lastly, Notre Dame must provide some sort of rally towel or something similar to unite the fans and make it as intimidating as possible. I have heard rumblings about this but nothing concrete.

Getting the fans to unite and wear a certain color in 20-degree weather is next to impossible, considering not many have a green or gold winter jacket. The next best option is to provide a green, gold, white or blue rally towel for fans to wave around and yell with.

Notre Dame needs to get as close to a Penn State 'White Out' atmosphere as possible and from what I am hearing, it sounds like there are internal plans to do something very similar.