The Michigan Wolverines are taking on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish this Saturday in South Bend, and it’s the renewing of a rivalry dating back to 1887. Although the renewal is brief — the two sides agreed to a home-and-home series in 2018-19 — it’ll be exciting to have one of college football’s most classic rivalries be played again.
The Michigan-Notre Dame rivalry returns with even more bad blood, thanks to its hiatus
The series will be renewed on Saturday after a four-year hiatus.
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Wait, if this rivalry’s so great, then why did they stop playing?
It’s thanks, in part, to Notre Dame’s scheduling deal with the ACC — the Fighting Irish play five teams from the conference each season, and although the Fighting Irish are still independent in football, the obligations make it a bit tricky to play Michigan every year like they used to.
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Along with the Irish’s five ACC games, Notre Dame has permanent rivalry games against Stanford, Navy, and USC. Teams like Michigan State, Purdue, and others have long histories with the Irish as well. That leaves tight wiggle room for scheduling big-time opponents like Michigan.
It wasn’t exactly an amicable split — starting in 2012, things got especially chippy.
In 2007, the two sides extended their series through 2031. But the rivalry was on a three-year rolling basis, giving either side the chance to opt out with three years’ notice.
In 2012, Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick gave a letter to Michigan AD David Brandon, canceling the games from 2015 to 2017. The kicker was that he gave it to Brandon right before kickoff between the two schools, with Notre Dame winning that game 13-6 in South Bend:
As the story went, Brandon stuck the letter in his pocket and purported not to look at it until the following day. When he did, he reportedly was bewildered by its contents.
The Notre Dame version of the narrative includes many of the same details, except for one. Swarbrick actually called Brandon the day before the ND-Michigan game to discuss the scheduling dilemma adding five ACC games a season had created.
Brandon then told Swarbrick he needed written documentation of the intended cancellation and Swarbrick said he would provide it before kickoff the next day. As Swarbrick handed it to Brandon, he reportedly asked Brandon if he was sure he needed the letter.
“I put the letter in my pocket and didn’t bother to read it right away because I was focused on the game we were about to play,” Brandon said via ESPN. “I read it on the way home Sunday morning.”
In 2013, then-Michigan head coach Brady Hoke accused Notre Dame of being scared to play Michigan each year.
“We have unbelievable rivalry games at Michigan,” Hoke said. “The Notre Dame, that rivalry, which they’re chickening out of ... they’re still going to play Michigan State, they’ll play Purdue; they don’t want to play Michigan.”
Then, in Hoke’s last year as Michigan’s coach in 2014, his team lost 31-0 to the Irish. Awkward!
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What do Notre Dame and Michigan fans think of the whole thing?
“Given the circumstances of the time, I think Notre Dame made what was (and still probably is) the correct move in cancelling the series,” Notre Dame site One Foot Down’s Joshua Vowles says. “With the partial move to the ACC, and the unknown of how the playoff committee would work, Notre Dame did what they had to schedule how they want to.
“Michigan fans were outraged because a coach [Hoke] that they hate and fired ran his mouth at an alumni gathering. There were also rumors that some of this had to do with Notre Dame’s unwillingness to work with Brandon. Notre Dame fans were split about the decision with about a thousand different reasons for or against.”
“It’s a complicated and nuanced conversation, for sure,” Michigan site Maize N Brew’s Anthony Broome says. “At the end of the day, these colleges are going to do what’s best for the program financially. I certainly think there was a bit more of a disappointed vibe from Michigan fans than there were from Notre Dame, but both sides were bummed to see it happen. Personally, Notre Dame should join a conference at some point and that the Big Ten is the logical and right fit, but they’re going to do what they’re going to do. It would not shock me to see the Big Ten go to 16 teams, and I would like to see the Irish as one of them.”
“The only bad blood seemed to come from Michigan fans who felt like Notre Dame was ‘chickening out,’” SB Nation producer and Notre Dame alumnus Jessica Smetana adds. “Realistically, fans would have been way more mad if Notre Dame canceled the rivalry with Navy or USC but that was just not going to happen. Notre Dame has to schedule tough teams because they are not technically in a conference and they need teams like Michigan to make a case for the playoffs. All canceling the series did was free up some scheduling space and postpone the next meeting for a couple of years.”
“Nobody was chickening out of playing games with Michigan under Hoke and his predecessor,” Broome adds. “Notre Dame wanted to play in more games that mattered, and I don’t fault them for a single second.”
Yes, the rivalry is historic. But the two didn’t start playing each other consistently until the 1978.
The beginning of the rivalry is pretty cool — in 1887, Michigan is credited as literally teaching Notre Dame how to play in the first-ever meeting between the two:
The first game took place in November 1887. Michigan had been playing football since 1879. Two players on Michigan’s 1887 team, George Winthrop DeHaven, Jr. and William Warren Harless, had previously attended Notre Dame. In October 1887, DeHaven wrote to Brother Paul, who ran Notre Dame’s intramural athletics program, telling him about the new game of football. Michigan had planned a game in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day, and the three men, DeHaven, Harless and Brother Paul, persuaded their respective schools to play a football match on the Notre Dame campus on the day before Thanksgiving.
But the rivalry didn’t ramp up until the 1980s, shortly after the teams agreed to meet annually:
In 1968, Don Canham, Michigan’s Athletic Director, and Moose Krause, Notre Dame’s AD worked out an agreement for a series of games beginning in 1978. Fr. Ned Joyce was notified. He recalled, “We’d been butting our heads up against a wall. We didn’t have any hard feelings. I always felt it was a personal thing between Crisler and Leahy, but we’re not going to hold it against the institution...It was such a natural to play Michigan, and we like to play the best. That’s been our policy.”
The home and home contract revolutionized college football scheduling. The home team would get all the receipts with a small guarantee for expenses. “Up until that contract, everybody just shared the gate,” Canham said. Michigan, with its 101,001 capacity stadium, could bring itself out of the red. “It was a financial decision,” said Canham..
“Nationally it was at the time, until the mid-90s … one of the most important college football rivalries,” football historian John Kryk said via The Observer. “And that’s saying something, when they hadn’t even played by the late-70s.”
Notre Dame has rivalries to tend to other than Michigan, too.
Take a look at how often the Fighting Irish have played some of their other rivals. ND has faced Michigan State 77 times, Purdue 84 times, USC 86 times, and Navy 90 times. The Irish have only played Michigan a total of 42 times.
Notre Dame has tons of rivalries, and Michigan has several big ones in the Big Ten, too.
After four years, you can bet both sides will be fired up to play again after so long. Can’t wait to see what the future of the rivalry holds.
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