Emerald Isle Classic
| Emerald Isle Classic Shamrock Classic Croke Park Classic Aer Lingus College Football Classic |
|
|---|---|
| Stadium | Aviva Stadium |
| Location | Dublin, Ireland |
| Previous stadiums | Lansdowne Road, Croke Park |
| Operated | 1988–89, 1996, 2012, 2014, 2016 |
The Emerald Isle Classic was the first NCAA-sanctioned American college football game played in Europe. The game was played at Lansdowne Road in Dublin, Ireland in the years 1988 and 1989. The first game featured a 2–7 Boston College team led by Mark Kamphaus against the 8–1 Army Black Knights. The originators of the game were Mr. Aidan J. Prendergast and Mr. Jim O'Brien. Mr. Prendergast, who is a former President of the Irish American Football Association conceived the idea of bringing a major NCAA game to Ireland in the mid 1980s and started pitching the idea on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Prendergast promoted both the 1988 and 1989 games.
The game is intended as an annual event to attract some of the 40 million Americans of Irish descent back to their fatherland. College teams with particularly Irish or Catholic background were chosen in an effort to attract Irish nationals to the games as well.
In 1996, Notre Dame and the United States Naval Academy began a second American football event in Ireland called the Shamrock Classic. The event, played at Croke Park, drew a slightly smaller crowd than the first Emerald Isle Classic. Notre Dame won the game over Navy, setting the record for the longest winning streak over an annual collegiate opponent at 33 wins.
A return trip by the teams in 2012, held at Aviva Stadium, was confirmed by the two schools and stadium management in September 2010. The Emerald Isle Classic was tied to the Irish tourism initiative The Gathering, which sought to encourage members of the Irish diaspora (especially in the U.S.) to visit their ancestral home in 2013. The first advance sellout for a sporting event in the two-year history of Aviva Stadium, 15,000 tickets sold in less than two hours, and about 35,000 Americans went to Dublin. The 2012 game aired live in parts of Europe as well as the U.S. The U.S. Navy docked an amphibious-assault warship in Dublin before the game. While the event was successful from a tourism perspective, it was marred by the poor treatment of the sport locally by the game organisers. Consequently, the originators, who had allowed the name "Emerald Isle Classic" to be used in 2012, transferred the intellectual property relating to the event, including the trademarks for the event name to the Irish American Football Association in 2015 for 'safe keeping'.
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