Alabama, Boston College, and Notre Dame are all being “considered” to play future football games at Croke Park in Ireland, The Score has reported.
Those games will reportedly be played in 2016 and 2018. A 2014 match-up has already been set and will feature the Penn State Nittany Lions versus the UCF Knights, The Irish Times reported earlier today.
The 2014 Penn State-UCF matchup will be officially announced by the two schools on Sunday, July 14.
Rumors of a possible Penn State game in Ireland surfaced back in February when Nittany Lions head coach Bill O’Brien announced that they were “definitely” looking into playing in Ireland.
Croke Park is the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). The last American football game played there was on July 27, 1997 and it featured a match-up between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Chicago Bears of the NFL.
Notre Dame and Navy played the first and only college football game at Croke Park in the Shamrock Classic in 1996.
Notre Dame also played a game in Ireland last season against Navy at Aviva Stadium. Boston College played their first and only game there in 1988 at Lansdowne Road.
According to our research, Alabama has never played a football game in Ireland or overseas. But Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide love to play season-opening kickoff games at neutral sites.
Alabama faced Michigan last season in Arlington, Texas and open the 2013 season against Virginia Tech in Atlanta. The Tide return to Atlanta in 2014 to play West Virginia and then Arlington in 2015 to play Wisconsin.
Of the three possible schools, Notre Dame would be the most likely team to return to Ireland, followed by Boston College. Alabama would be an interesting team to feature overseas, but finding a worthy opponent might be difficult.