Notre Dame Football Fan's Guide to the Michigan Rivalry Game
Enough with the pleasantries, it's time to play for keeps. That's right Notre Dame fans, it's Michigan week.
The Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry is decades old and pits two of the more interesting pools of Midwest college football fans against one another.
On one side there is Notre Dame whose Catholic roots engender a holier-than-thou self-righteousness. The school prides itself on all-around excellence and refusal to compromise on its standards which some believe is the cause of recent gridiron struggles.
On the other side is Michigan, with its supreme air of confidence that at times borders on irrational arrogance. Its status as one of the first premier college football institutions endows it with an unsurprising combination of entitlement and a superiority complex.
Suffice to say, there is no love lost in this rivalry game. Most of the insults between the fan bases follow a predictable path, dealing with jobs, heaven, Rudy (yes, he sucked, that's why it's a movie), and occasionally mothers.
It's not uncommon during the week leading up to this game to hear Notre Dame fans declare that "Michigan sucks". At first blush, this sounds like a crude and primitive taunt straight from the Boston College handbook.
However, among the Notre Dame faithful, those two words carry a significance much deeper and more sophisticated than a cursory interpretation would suggest. They explore something more fundamental, perhaps in the essence or the spirit, in an attempt to identify the foul rank shirt in a pile of dirty laundry.
Is this a self-righteous interpretation? Perhaps more like an exorcism. To help explain, here are the Top 10 things that every Notre Dame fan should know about its enemy.
10. The President Says So
1 of 10It's lacking in the usual formality, but that sounds like an executive order if ever there was one. And no one messes with Martin Sheen.
Naturally, Michigan fans will counter with the argument that they have an alum and former football player who was an actual president. But better to have no president at all than one mauled to death by circus lions in a convenience store.
9. They Can Dish It Out But Can't Take It
2 of 10Football is a game of valor, courage and self-sacrifice. In that context, it's hard to imagine more of a punk move than this.
Michigan Stadium seats well north of 100,000 fans so one would think a Michigan team could tolerate the din of a mere 60,000 opposing fans on the road. Apparently, someone forgot to tell this Wolverine team they weren't playing at the Masters.
Amazingly, Michigan's stall tactics actually induced the referee to throw a penalty against the crowd. But Irish linebacker Ned Bolcar showed them where they could put their five yards and stuffed the subsequent third-and-goal play to preserve the win for Notre Dame.
8. Fight Song Makes Babies Cry
3 of 10Many college football fans find Michigan's "Hail to the Victors" to be a discordant hymn, but it is the purest souls to whom it is truly intolerable.
Who takes such joy in the torture of the innocent? Even The Grinch at least gave Cindy Lou Who a drink and put her to bed.
It's no surprise then to learn about the core requirement of Michigan's Kinesiology program.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
7. The Ringless One
4 of 10
There is no name more revered in Michigan football than that of former Wolverine head coach Bo Schembechler, the winningest coach in program history.
Schembechler certainly had his share of regular season success, earning at least a share of 13 Big Ten titles and leading his team to 10 Rose Bowl appearances. He had a winning record against Ohio State, although he was 4-6 against the Irish.
However, he had a curious habit in the post-season. Bo didn't know how to win the big ones, finishing his career with a 2-8 record in the Rose Bowl and no national championships. That kind of consistency will earn a shared bunk with the Buffalo Bills.
Perhaps Lloyd Carr wasn't so bad after all.
6. In Soviet Russia, Whipping Boy Beats You
5 of 10It's not unusual for any college football team to load up a non-conference schedule with some easy pickings, but scheduling schools from Division 1-AA is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. If the varsity is going to scrimmage the JV in search of easy wins, they best make sure they don't get beat.
Michigan is by no means the first Division 1A team to be humiliated, but the list is short and dishonorable.
5. Tradition Doesn't (Help Players) Graduate
6 of 10
Michigan is a very good academic institution with excellent resources, professors and facilities. That is not sarcasm, that's a fact.
But that fact makes it all the more tragic that studies within the last few years show a wide disparity of the school's graduation of black athletes, particularly football players (roughly 60% of white players graduate as opposed to only 40% of black players).
It would have been nice to see some ownership and accountability on the issue, especially when Jim Harbaugh, a popular Wolverine quarterback in his time, said the university could improve its support of student athletes. But it's much easier to strip dissenters of the cherished "Michigan Man" title and sweep the issue towards the nearest rug.
Granted Notre Dame is hardly a paragon of diversity; the only time the campus gets whiter is when it snows. However, there is a commitment to helping all the athletes (including over 90% of football players) graduate and not discard them like used gym towels.
4. Players Throw the Coach Under the Bus
7 of 10Yes, every team probably practices more than the NCAA rule, but when players rat out their coach to the media, there are bigger problems on the ship. It doesn't help when the captain gets weepy, but somewhere, Dick Vermeil is ready with a tissue.
With all that extra conditioning, there won't be any excuses for being gassed defending the no-huddle spread.
3. They Don't Learn From Their Mistakes
8 of 10Irish wide receiver Rocket Ismail entered his sophomore season in 1989 with two kickoff returns for touchdowns already to his name. The second game of that season pitted his Unstoppable Force with the Immovable Object of Michigan's kickoff coverage, which was enjoying a long streak without surrendering a kickoff touchdown.
Through the first half, Bo Schembechler's Wolverines appeared to prove the Rocket's mortality. But in the third quarter, he finally broke free.
Then, with the game still in doubt, rather than kick away from Rocket or squib the kick, Michigan again him a clean look, determined to prove Ismail was not better than their coverage teams.
He was. Again.
2. In Defeat, Michigan Never Admits Defeat
9 of 10One advantage of never respecting an opponent is that the opponent can never be superior, even when the scoreboard says otherwise. This is tremendously advantageous for clinging to mangled shreds of dignity, although it does come across a tad absurd (see: Blagojevich, Rod).
Wolverine safety Stevie Brown, after surrendering 35 points in a 2008 loss to Notre Dame, took full responsibility for the defeat and vowed to work harder for the upcoming game, telling UND.com, "We don't have our heads down because we know who the better team was."
Michigan finished the 2008 season with a 3-9 record. The prosecution rests, your honor.
1. Nobody Likes The Kid Who Picks Up The Ball and Goes Home
10 of 10
It also doesn't help when that kid also tries to undercut its rivals' existence.
This is the wellspring from which all the hatred in this rivalry flows.
Michigan and Notre Dame began a very cordial series of games in 1887 that turned sour when Notre Dame notched its first victory in 1909. Michigan's Fielding Yost subsequently cancelled the next year's game and refused to play the Irish again.
It took over three decades before relations were repaired, but the goodwill lasted all of two games. After Notre Dame's victory in 1943, the first game between a #1 and #2 ranked team, Michigan and coach Fritz Crisler again dropped the series.
Boycotting the Irish was one thing, but Michigan went a step further to squelch its upstart offspring by encouraging other teams not to schedule games against Notre Dame. Their hope was that the Irish program would wither and die from lack of quality opponents.
Despite those efforts, Notre Dame coaches Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy brought the Irish to national prominence and won a few championships along the way.
Thus a hated rivalry was born.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
