At the dawn of the 1991 season, NBC introduced college football fans to something different.
The network acquired the rights to exclusively broadcast Notre Dame Fighting Irish home games and put together a flowing opening montage that highlighted the program’s illustrious history interspersed with a cameraman walking down the steps from the locker room to the field. Clips of speeches from legendary coach Knute Rockne were sandwiched around notable highlights and shots of the famous “Play Like a Champion” sign that is forever part of program lore. The fight song played in the background to give it a familiar tune that tied it all together on a telecast that was undoubtedly focused first on the program in South Bend and everybody else a distant second.
