MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – One of the things that drive crazy those who who happen not to bleed Notre Dame blue is the fact that the Fighting Irish program has an uncanny knack of always being the biggest magnet in the sport. You don’t have to like it, of course, but it’s true. Notre Dame sells.
And when Notre Dame wins, Notre Dame matters.
One of the unique ways this manifests itself is in the notion of rivalries. Just about every football school in America has its natural, ancient rival. Army has Navy. Michigan has Ohio State. Alabama has Auburn. Duke has North Carolina. Most of the time it’s geographic, but not all. All of the time, it’s forever.
Unless you’re talking about Notre Dame, of course.
Notre Dame’s rivals have rotated for years, for decades, for close to the century that “Notre Dame football” has been something about which to get worked up. That includes everyone, too. The USC-Notre Dame rivalry is one of the oldest in the land, and make no mistake, there have been some glamorous and unforgettable games across the years. But it’s no gimme.
“That’s what makes the revival of the Miami rivalry so great, I think,” says Jerry Barca, an author who wrote “Unbeatable,” a remembrance of the most recent Notre Dame championship season, and a film producer who helped bring “Catholics Vs. Convicts” to the ESPN “30-for-30” series. “Sometimes history can almost make great rivalries disappear because it’s always about what’s ‘now.’ Well, Miami-Notre Dame is ‘now’ again.”
Perhaps the most intense rivalry in the sport’s history was the one Notre Dame had with Army in 1944, ’45 and ’46, capped by the 0-0 tie the teams played at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 9, 1946 when Army was consensus No. 1 and Notre Dame No. 2. Yet by 1947 the game was moved out of the Bronx and in ’48 off the schedule completely because the bad feelings around the game had grown too high.
“I think if you look at what Notre Dame-Army meant in the context of the times, that was probably the biggest rivalry they’ve ever had,” Barca said. “But Miami came awfully close.”
One of the remarkable things about Notre Dame’s history – especially when you consider that, as an independent, it formulates its own schedule, and has never had eight or nine games automatically built in – is that it’s managed to always find a way to have the era’s significant teams on its schedule.
Oklahoma, for instance, had only periodically been a Notre Dame opponent through the years but the Sooners were sure on it on Nov. 16, 1957, when the Irish beat them, 7-0, to end OU’s 47-game winning streak. Michigan State had been a longtime opponent, but was elevated to a whole different plane by being the co-star of the infamous 10-10 tie in 1966. Florida State just happened to show up on the schedule in 1993, when Notre Dame handed it a huge upset in South Bend.
On and on.
Of course, Miami was different, and Miami was special, because Miami had emerged as the college football powerhouse of the 1980s after falling on a stretch of hard times so profound they almost stopped playing each other. But by 1985, Miami had become such a bully that in Gerry Faust’s final game the Hurricanes crushed the Irish 58-7, a game that became a rallying point for what happened three years later.
That, of course, was the forever 31-30 Irish victory in what’s come to be known as the “Catholics vs. Convicts” game, a win that propelled ND to a 12-0 record and its most recent championship in 1988, capped by a Fiesta Bowl win over West Virginia. And that game, and the memory of it, is why so many Notre Dame folks are so glad to be taking part in another big game in South Florida.
“That game announced that Notre Dame was back on the mountaintop, that it could look the bully in the eye,” Barca says. “But it had become a part of ancient history. Think about it: that was 29 years ago. The first time I started going to Notre Dame games, in the ‘80s, the same context would’ve been back in the ‘50s. It’s hard to relate that way.”
And now nobody has to. Back to the future we go.
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