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We Trace 33 Years of Silence Between Michigan and Notre Dame · Sports History Network

• 0:47
  On Friday, November 4, 1910, Michigan called off a football game that was scheduled for the next day.
• 0:52
  Nothing about the decision was dramatic.
• 0:54
  No vote, no scandal, no press conference.
• 0:57
  An athletic director decided the game would not be played and that was that.
• 1:00
  33 years that series was on ice.
• 1:05
  Welcome to the Gridiron timeline.
• 1:06
  Today we're in 1942 and the game is the story that finally ended it.
• 1:11
  Stay with me and you'll know who bolted the door.
• 1:13
  What 33 year empty years to cost the two most decorated programs in sports history?
• 1:18
  And why the first game back turned into a 32 to 20 beating in South Bend?
• 1:23
  One question before we go, and I want you to answer this in the comments.
• 1:26
  When a series dies over eligibility paperwork, who carries the blame?
• 1:31
  The school that canceled the game or the school that lined up the players that were illegal?
• 1:35
  Now Michigan and Notre Dame.
• 1:38
  Hold on to that thought.
• 1:39
  I'm bringing it back at the end of this podcast episode.
• 1:45
  Here's what those Friday meetings are actually about.
• 1:48
  The game was scheduled for Saturday, November 5, 1910.
• 1:50
  And beforehand, Michigan reviewed Notre Dame's roster and filed a protest.
• 1:55
  Two Notre Dame players, Philbrook and Dimmick, were in their seventh year of college eligibility and a third player was ineligible in his fourth season.
• 2:03
  Remember, freshmen could not play varsity ball, so you had three years of eligibility.
• 2:07
  The two athletic authorities argued the rules with each other and then argued them in newspapers.
• 2:12
  And on Friday afternoon before the kickoff, the the athletic directors met one last time to settle it.
• 2:17
  Neither side backed down.
• 2:18
  Michigan's athletic director canceled the game entirely based on those illegal players playing.
• 2:26
  Now pay attention to what canceled game actually does.
• 2:29
  It does not settle anything.
• 2:31
  It freezes a season exactly where the argument stopped.
• 2:34
  So the argument didn't end in 1910.
• 2:36
  It just stopped being spoken about.
• 2:39
  It actually lasted for 33 years.
• 2:42
  And that's where we take our story and pick it up today.
• 2:46
  Now, if the two schools were going to spend 33 years apart playing the game of football, but you know, need to know why they were apart from.
• 2:56
  And why what they were apart from.
• 2:58
  Notre Dame's first football game was played in November 23, 1887, in South Bend against Michigan.
• 3:04
  It started because of a letter that October.
• 3:06
  A Michigan player named George WINTHROP De Haven Jr.
• 3:09
  Wrote a brother, Paul, who ran Notre Dame's intramural athletics and described a new game being played in Ann Arbor.
• 3:15
  De Haven had attended Notre Dame, so he had a teammate, William Warren Harless.
• 3:20
  Now, the three of them convinced the two schools to play the day before Thanksgiving.
• 3:25
  Michigan, who had been traveling to and been en route to a game that they were going to play.
• 3:31
  They left Ann Arbor on a late train out of Michigan Central depot and.
• 3:35
  And they changed trains in Niles and reached south bend between 7 and 8 in the morning and rode to campus.
• 3:41
  Now Michigan won that game eight nothing.
• 3:43
  They taught Notre Dame how to play football.
• 3:45
  Notre Dame's first football game taught by Michigan in Michigan's image.
• 3:50
  Eight to nothing for the Wolverines back then.
• 3:54
  Now for two decades this series was sort of going in the same direction.
• 4:00
  Michigan dominated, won the first eight meetings.
• 4:04
  And then in 1909 that season Notre Dame beat Michigan for the first time in the series history.
• 4:09
  And the temperature of the whole relationship changed.
• 4:13
  Notre Dame stopped being the school that learned the game from Ann Arbor and started being a school that could take the Saturdays away from Michigan.
• 4:22
  So that 1910 protest and that contention that Michigan had was not protecting a rule book.
• 4:30
  Michigan was protecting an unbeaten record against a school it had personally introduced to the sport.
• 4:35
  Now that's why this door stayed shut.
• 4:39
  But we're going to learn a little bit more about that coming up here.
• 4:45
  Understand what actually loss is lost here because it's easy to hear what they just stop playing and just move on from it.
• 4:52
  Now Michigan claims it's 12 national championships.
• 4:55
  Notre Dame claims 11.
• 4:57
  Notre Dame has produced 107 consensus all Americans.
• 5:00
  Michigan produced 87.
• 5:02
  Notre Dame has 522 players selected in the NFL draft.
• 5:05
  And Michigan has had 39233 years.
• 5:09
  And not one of those Saturdays happened on the same field.
• 5:12
  These are two of the premier college programs back then and now.
• 5:18
  This is not the first time the two schools have stepped away from each other.
• 5:21
  They've broken up before and they had healed.
• 5:24
  What made 1910 different was that nobody hurried back.
• 5:27
  No arbiter, no neutral site offer, no commissioner leaning on both athletic departments, no television.
• 5:33
  Two administrators disagreed on a Friday and then an entire generation of players graduated without ever knowing what the matchup even felt like.
• 5:44
  Now the 1920s should have been a decade where the really the rivalry belonged to.
• 5:50
  Newt Rockne had built Notre Dame into a perennial powerhouse.
• 5:54
  The national name in those years.
• 5:55
  Michigan was winning at the same time in the same part of the country in front of the same crowds.
• 6:00
  And the two men never stood on opposite sidelines.
• 6:03
  Not once Rocky ever coach a game against Michigan.
• 6:07
  That's unbelievable in this era that where Notre Dame was traveling so much.
• 6:12
  Now, you may have heard of our episode on the 1923 track meet at Fairy Field where the two schools crossed paths on the football field and it went badly in if you have not, that's one that's on this
• 6:23
  channel and explains how deep this really went.
• 6:25
  So make sure you check that out.
• 6:26
  Then.
• 6:26
  On March 31, 1931, Newt Rockney died in a plane crash.
• 6:30
  He was 43 years old.
• 6:31
  Whatever door was going to reopen, it was never going to be Newt Rocky that walked through it.
• 6:37
  He was no longer part of that equation.
• 6:41
  But it ended.
• 6:42
  And the man who ended it is not the coach on the field.
• 6:46
  He was Michigan's athletic director and head coach, Fritz Chrysler.
• 6:50
  And he put a two game deal on the table with Notre Dame.
• 6:53
  One game in 1942, one game in 43, right.
• 6:57
  During World War II, just before really the was getting involved when the games were scheduled.
• 7:04
  Now read it again as an administrator would.
• 7:06
  Two games are not a treaty, it's an experiment.
• 7:08
  If it went badly, the series could be shut down again with one phone call and and both schools would say they tried.
• 7:14
  The country was at War.
• 7:15
  The 1942 season was played against the backdrop and the schedule that autumn still had room in it for a game that had been owed for 33 years.
• 7:25
  Now, November 14, 1942, almost 33 years of the day.
• 7:30
  Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Indiana.
• 7:32
  This is the first time these two schools have met since 1909.
• 7:36
  Over 57,000 fans packed the stadium there at South Bend Stadium and Notre Dame struck first.
• 7:44
  And at halftime, The Irish led 14, 13 and for 30 minutes of school.
• 7:48
  And to learn, the game in 1887 looked like it would win the argument two in a row for them.
• 7:53
  If you go back to 1909, Michigan scored 19 points in that third quarter.
• 7:58
  Notre Dame surrendered the ball six times on turnovers and the visitors from Ann Arbor rushed for over 300 yards.
• 8:04
  Final score, Michigan 32, Notre Dame 20.
• 8:07
  Now, it didn't seem like that was that close of a game, but remember, Notre Dame dominated for most of the game.
• 8:12
  Greg Dooley of M Victors put the whole thing in one sentence and it's worth reading it on screen exactly as he wrote it.
• 8:19
  Quote, the team who taught Notre Dame how to play football back in 1887 once again delivered a lesson and this time with a 3220 beating end quote.
• 8:30
  The natural rivalry.
• 8:31
  It resumed there in 1942.
• 8:34
  Now we have a quick word before we finish this one.
• 8:38
  Now, every episode of the Gridiron timeline is built primarily from the account of newspaper pages and letters that were written and really good books that are written on history to keep the material alive.
• 8:49
  And if you want more year by year version, the archive lives@pigskindispatch.com and our gridiron timeline.
• 8:55
  So make sure you check that out.
• 8:57
  Now the part that makes the 1942 game more than a score.
• 9:00
  The series came back in the very next season to produce the biggest game in in the country.
• 9:07
  On October 9, 1943, Nation at War.
• 9:11
  The top ranked Notre Dame beat second ranked Michigan.
• 9:14
  That was the first time the top two teams in the country had met since the AP poll began in 1936.
• 9:22
  It was 33 years of silence and then a game of 3220 the year before.
• 9:27
  And then the payoff was the first game of its kind in the history of the poll.
• 9:31
  That's what made what was sitting on the other side of the door this entire time during that silence.
• 9:38
  Now here's where the twist that keeps this story alive and maybe stay honest after 1943, the two schools stopped playing each other again.
• 9:48
  The series that ended college football's longest band never became an annual rivalry.
• 9:52
  Michigan and Notre Dame did not meet again until 1978.
• 9:57
  Another 30 some years.
• 9:58
  Imagine that.
• 10:00
  Which tells you something about the bands.
• 10:02
  Ending one isn't the same as fixing what caused it.
• 10:05
  Chrysler opened a door in 1942.
• 10:07
  He took another 35 years for the two schools to decide they wanted to walk through it every year.
• 10:13
  So who bolted this door in 1910?
• 10:17
  The protest over the two players in their seventh year and a third that was not eligible because he was playing his fourth year enough to cancel the game in 1940 waited until 1942.
• 10:30
  The two ethnic directors were finally willing to schedule to see what happened.
• 10:34
  And the rulebook never changed it on its own.
• 10:36
  People change their minds about it.
• 10:39
  And that game itself never cared about any of it.
• 10:43
  33 years of paperwork and it still ended 3220 with the school that taught Notre Dame how to play it in 1887.
• 10:49
  Handing out one more lesson in South Bend.
• 10:53
  Now the question I asked you earlier right up at the top.
• 10:57
  When a series dies over eligibility paperwork, who carries the blame?
• 11:00
  The school that canceled the game or the school that lined up the players who were not eligible?
• 11:05
  Michigan or Notre Dame?
• 11:06
  Tell me in the comments and tell me if your answer changed by the end of this one.
• 11:11
  We're glad that you joined us again today.
• 11:13
  Hope you join us next time for some more great football history.
• 11:17
  Till next time everybody have a great grit on your day.