College football in Ireland

College football in Ireland began initially in 1988 as part of a promotional campaign to mark the Dublin millennium celebrations. Initially known as the Emerald Isle Classic, it was the "first major" NCAA-sanctioned American college football game played in Europe. The first games were played, at Lansdowne Road in Dublin, in 1988 and 1989.

The event was first proposed and arranged by Aidan J. Prendergast and Jim O'Brien. Prendergast, who was 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. Prendergast promoted both the 1988 and 1989 games.

Also previously known as the Shamrock Classic, from 2016 the event was marketed as the Aer Lingus College Football Classic.

The inaugural Emerald Isle Classic was held at Lansdowne Road in Dublin with a crowd of 42,524 in attendance. It featured a 2–7 Boston College team led by Mark Kamphaus that beat the 8–1 Army Black Knights 38–24.

The second annual Emerald Isle Classic was held at Lansdowne Road on 2 December 1989. In the contest, Pittsburgh defeated Rutgers by a final score of 46–29 before a crowd of 19,800.

On 16 November 1991, an NCAA-sanctioned American college football game was played at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick. The game, marketed as the Wild Geese Classic, coincided with the 300th anniversary of the Flight of the Wild Geese of 1691 and was named for the Irish soldiers who resisted the Siege of Limerick. The game matched NCAA Division I-AA teams Fordham and Holy Cross with Holy Cross winning 24–19.

While the Gaelic Grounds had a capacity at the time of about 50,000 people, the game had an attendance of approximately 12,000. According to a contemporary report in the New York Times, some of the local Irish attendees (including the sports editor from the Limerick Leader) queried how substitutions could be made freely between plays. And, while some were unfamiliar with "linebackers and end-arounds", the attendees "did recognize high hang-time punts".

The 1993 Emerald Isle Classic was scheduled to be played at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney. To be played on October 9, the game was to have been a matchup against Yankee Conference rivals UMass and Rhode Island. In August 1993, the game was relocated from Ireland to McGuirk Stadium in Hadley, Massachusetts after it was determined the game would be a financial loss for the participating schools.