SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame will do something unusual Saturday after the final whistle of its matchup Saturday against Navy in San Diego. The Fighting Irish will load their buses at SDCCU Stadium and go back to their hotel, where the players will go to sleep. Their game will end about 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Their wake-up call will be 7:30 a.m., and they’ll arrive back in South Bend on Sunday afternoon.
Typically, a team playing a road game will bus immediately to the airport and fly home. In Notre Dame’s situation, that would mean a takeoff past midnight Eastern Time, and players would get back to their own beds around 6 a.