What Notre Dame Football Can Learn From 1993 Before Boston College

Notre Dame beat the No. 1 team in the country 31-24 at Notre Dame Stadium last Saturday night, and Boston College comes to South Bend this week. Anyone who followed the Irish in the early 1990s has seen this setup before. And the ending to that story is a nightmare that still plagues this program.

On Nov. 13, 1993, No. 2 Notre Dame beat No. 1 Florida State 31-24 at home to move to 10-0. Seven days later, Boston College won 41-39 in the same stadium on a David Gordon field goal as time expired, and Notre Dame’s national title hopes left with it.
The 2026 Irish have the first half of that story in hand. Saturday is about keeping the second half from repeating.

What Happened in 1993

The Florida State win moved Notre Dame to No. 1, and the Irish went into the Boston College game as the team with the inside track to a title.

BC jumped ahead early and kept building. The Eagles led 38-17 in the fourth quarter before Notre Dame scored 22 points in the final 11 minutes. Lee Becton’s touchdown run and two-point conversion, a Ray Zellars touchdown run and a Kevin McDougal pass to Lake Dawson with 1:09 left put the Irish in front 39-38. Glenn Foley then moved BC into range, and Gordon hit from 41 yards on the last play. A dropped Pete Bercich interception on the drive haunted the defense the same way DJ Brown’s dropped INT against Ohio State in 2023 did.

Notre Dame went on to beat Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl. Florida State won the national title anyway as pollsters gave Bobby Bowden his life-time achievement award for continually getting close instead of rewarding the team that proved they were better on the field. The Irish had beaten the eventual champion head-to-head and still finished behind them because of what happened a week later.

At the time it looked like Notre Dame was about to win its second national title in five years. Instead, the Irish finished second then had a disastrous 1994 season followed by two ho-hum seasons and the abrupt retirement of Lou Holtz. Years of mediocrity and futility followed and today the program is still searching for its first national championship since then.

Boston College Was Good in 1993

The way the game usually gets remembered, Notre Dame tripped over a team it should have handled easily. That version leaves a lot out.

BC came into South Bend ranked No. 17 under Tom Coughlin. The Eagles opened 0-2, losing to No. 3 Miami and then 22-21 at Northwestern, and then won seven straight. The week before the Notre Dame game, they shut out Pittsburgh 33-0 on the road. They finished 9-3. Notre Dame was the more talented team and should have beaten them, but this wasn’t losing to Northern Illinois or even like Stanford in 2022.

They also had a reason to want this one. In 1992, a 7-0-1 Boston College team ranked ninth came into the Notre Dame game and lost 54-7 including a fake punt from the Irish after the game was well within hand. The 1993 group arrived with a quarterback in Foley who could carry them, a top 25 ranking, and a year of built up animosity from that blowout and fake punt. Notre Dame was coming off the biggest win of its season. A ranked team catching a favorite in a letdown spot is how a lot of November upsets happen, and that’s what 1993 was.

Imagine the uproar today if the roles were reversed?

This Boston College Team Is a Different Opponent

The 2026 Eagles are 4-5 and 2-4 in the ACC in Bill O’Brien’s third season. They lost 47-2 at Duke on Oct. 31 and then lost 31-24 at home to Florida State last week. They are unranked, and Notre Dame opened as roughly a 30-point favorite. The line has drifted to around 31.5.

The format is different too. In 1993 there was no playoff, and one November loss was enough to cost Notre Dame the title. The 12-team playoff gives the Irish a little more room, but not much. A loss Saturday would be their second of the season, and losing to an unranked 4-5 team would hurt them with the committee far more than the 28-24 loss at BYU did.

That kind of loss would push Notre Dame right back toward the cutoff it just climbed away from.

What’s at Stake Now

After the Miami win, the selection committee moved Notre Dame from No. 11 to No. 5 in Tuesday’s rankings. The four highest-ranked teams earn first-round byes, so the Irish are one spot off the line with Boston College, SMU and a trip to Syracuse left.
Notre Dame fans know how thin that line can be. Last year the Irish finished No. 11 and were the first team left out of the field. This year’s committee put them at No. 11 a week ago, before the Miami game, because they dinged the Irish for a lack of signature win, something they now have. A loss to Boston College would undo most of that, and nothing left on the schedule offers a win like Miami to make up for it.

Where 1993 Still Applies

The opponent in the win over #1 is different, but the opponent the week after and the spot on the calendar isn’t. Notre Dame is coming off a win over a #1 team that ended with fans on the field, a week of national attention, and a jump in every ranking that matters. That’s the same set of conditions the 1993 team carried into the Boston College game.

Freeman raised the issue himself of a letdown at his Monday press conference.

“I know it’s gonna get brought up by somebody about the post-big game win let downs. It’s easy to say that’s not gonna be us, but it’s a real thing. If you do enough studying on it, there’s an issue with after big wins, teams having let downs the next week. I even did a little study of what do the coaches say after they lose? It’s very common themes, right? It’s we weren’t disciplined, we didn’t have a great week of prep. We’re not mature.

“It’s our job as coaches to make sure we’re prepared, right? You don’t blame the players. You mandate that we prepare in a way that doesn’t allow us to have a letdown. When I say a letdown, I’m not talking outcome of game, I’m talking about performance in the way you play. Even if you look at and you study kind of some of those games, what you’ll see is third down’s an issue, turnover margin’s an issue, penalties are an issue. There are some common themes that we have to understand; it’s a real thing. We have to make sure we remember that as we prepare for this next opponent, so we gotta get to work.”

Freeman’s version of a letdown is the right thing to watch Saturday. A 4-5 Boston College team isn’t going to beat Notre Dame on talent. The way it hangs around is if the Irish help it out on third down, in the turnover margin and with penalties, the same areas Freeman pointed to. The 1993 Eagles were good enough to make Notre Dame pay for an off day. This group would need a lot more help to do the same, and Notre Dame’s job is to give it none.

SMU comes to South Bend on Nov. 21 and a trip to Syracuse awaits on Nov. 28. Before either one, Notre Dame has to take care of the game that got away 33 years ago.