Fighting Irish Not Sure About Fenway Game

That didn't take long. Hours after the Boston Globe reported that the Boston Red Sox were interested in hosting Notre Dame and UConn in a football game slated for 2014, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick had this to say on the matter in a statement: "We have work to do on our future football schedules, given the announcement last week relative to our upcoming Atlantic Coast Conference relationship. However, media reports today that we will play Connecticut in Fenway Park in 2014 are inaccurate."

So there you go, right? Not so fast. Fighting Irish coach Brian Kelly said the idea of facing the Huskies in a game at Fenway was appealing, though he wasn't sure that the century-old baseball stadium was equipped for football.

"I just saw that," Kelly said of the Globe report. "You know me, I love Fenway Park. I just don’t know if it’s big enough. As long as they do the due diligence, and I know Jack (Swarbrick) is looking for great venues, and I don’t think they played a game there in a long time. If it’s on the schedule, we’re going to play it. "Being a Boston guy, baseball has not been very good there, so maybe we’ll bring some football."

Meanwhile, coach Paul Pasqualoni said he was intrigued by the idea too.

"(Athletic director) Warde (Manuel) is working on that very hard," he said Tuesday. "The nonconference schedule, Connecticut's always played very, very high-level nonconference teams. ... It would be exciting. ... But that is all I know. I'm just coaching here. We talk about it. That schedule business, that's a full-time job."

Kelly concedes that while he loves the idea there are also the logistics Swarbrick alluded to.

"I think it would be cool, yeah. I’d like to do it,’’ he said. ‘‘But I think more than anything else, I don’t know the ramifications of the 2014 schedule as it relates to ACC scheduling and all those kinds of things."

Who knows, at the rate things are changing, UConn could be in the ACC by then. For now, the Fenway Bowl sounds more like a dream than a reality.

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