{"id":187373,"date":"2025-08-30T13:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T13:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187373\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T13:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T13:35:10","slug":"the-notre-dame-miami-rivalry-was-peak-college-football-then-it-abruptly-stopped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187373\/","title":{"rendered":"The Notre Dame-Miami rivalry was peak college football. Then it abruptly stopped"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you want to share your predictions, analysis or thoughts on Sunday\u2019s Notre Dame-Miami game? Get involved with our coverage at live@theathletic.com.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pat Walsh set up shop outside the Orange Bowl figuring business would be good. A year earlier, as a senior at Notre Dame in 1988, he had made a small fortune selling \u201cCatholics vs. Convicts\u201d T-shirts around campus when Notre Dame upset No. 1 Miami, which felt like an exorcism for Irish fans after four consecutive losses to the Hurricanes.<\/p>\n

The coloring wasn\u2019t much different on the update: basic white background, similar green and orange lettering. The front read, \u201c#1 Catholics vs. #7 Convicts\u201d with \u201cWar On The Shore\u201d on the back.<\/p>\n

Walsh admits it was a bit bland, the impossible follow-up to a shirt that spawned an ESPN \u201c30 for 30\u201d documentary. As it turned out, the reaction outside the Orange Bowl was more memorable than the item for sale.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were throwing s\u2014 at us, beer cans, swearing at us,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cI remember the corner we were on backed up to a parking lot with bushes. After 45 minutes, We gotta get out of here. These people had some real hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Notre Dame returns to Miami on Sunday night, there won\u2019t be a T-shirt. There won\u2019t even be an Orange Bowl, a college football relic, almost like the series itself. If rivalries are what make college football great, Notre Dame-Miami is a case study of fervor gone too far. It\u2019s not clear who hated whom first or most, just that both fan bases did so in a way that turned the rivalry into more than a football game. Something worse.<\/p>\n

The games themselves should have been enough to continue the annual series. The final four meetings of the 20-year engagement from 1971 to 1990 were all top-10 matchups, and three of those four featured the eventual national champion. And the games were great, from Pat Terrell\u2019s game-winning pass breakup in \u201988 to Craig Erickson hitting Randal Hill to convert third-and-43 in \u201989. It was everything else that helped end the series, though the ground has thawed since.<\/p>\n

When Walsh returned home to Chicago after the game and went back to work at the Board of Trade, he got a call from a Notre Dame administrator. Word had gotten back to campus that he\u2019d been selling shirts again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was fearful walking out of the Orange Bowl, wearing Notre Dame stuff,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cIt was intimidating. We\u2019d been pursing Miami for years. Now they were coming at us. All the spirit and hype we had in South Bend, that transferred to Miami. And they took it well beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Miami and Notre Dame played in 1990, it was the 19th time the schools met over a 20-year span (the teams did not play in 1986). Notre Dame\u2019s athletic director at the time, Dick Rosenthal, cited an unhealthy hatred between fans of both schools, a desire to play new opponents and a full schedule through 2004 as the reasons why the Irish were discontinuing the series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis rivalry is a little bigger than it should be,\u201d Rosenthal told the Miami Herald in the lead-up to the 1990 game. \u201cMany fans have a passion for this game that\u2019s unhealthy. Maybe cooling it off for a period of time isn\u2019t such a bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hottest the rivalry ever got on the field was in 1988 when a pregame fight broke out as Miami players were attempting to head back to the locker room near the tunnel. Irish nose tackle Chris Zorich later admitted Notre Dame players started the skirmish.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tony Rice and the Irish topped Miami 31-30 in 1988. (Notre Dame Athletics)<\/p>\n

Kelvin Harris got a front row seat to four meetings between the Canes and Irish at the height of the rivalry. Harris played with Terrell and Todd Lyght, another former Irish defensive back, with the Los Angeles Rams.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think most of us felt like it was a travesty for college football that it didn\u2019t continue,\u201d Harris said. \u201cAnd I understand Notre Dame had rivalries with USC, Michigan and others. But there was something different about Miami-Notre Dame from an intensity standpoint. The dislike of the two teams \u2014 Duke-North Carolina in basketball is what comes to mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Scott had a lot of jobs at the University of Miami from 1981 to 2009, from assistant baseball coach to football recruiting coordinator to assistant athletic director. Now in his 70s, he\u2019s still teaching classes at the school. He\u2019s excited about Sunday\u2019s game, but he is also old enough to remember what it was like before the rivalry became heated. He grew up in South Florida when Notre Dame beat the Hurricanes regularly in the 1950s, \u201960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I became assistant (athletic director) for football at Miami, I did a little research and I learned Notre Dame would come to Miami and spend the entire week here enjoying the beach before playing here \u2014 and they dominated the series,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

Scott believes Notre Dame began looking for a way out of the series when Miami embarrassed the Irish 58-7 in 1985 \u2014 the infamous final game for Irish head coach\u00a0Gerry Faust.<\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy (Johnson) didn\u2019t run up the score \u2014 I don\u2019t think,\u201d Scott said. \u201cI think it was just one of those things where our No. 2s were better than their No. 1s and they gave up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, we went up there in 1988 and had the fight pregame. Well, every time USC came to town, they had the same fight in the tunnel. But people forget that. To me, it was almost like Florida (which stopped its annual series with the Hurricanes in the late 1980s). Florida didn\u2019t want to lose those games to us. Notre Dame didn\u2019t want to lose them either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy Johnson and his successor Dennis Erickson twice sent Scott to Notre Dame\u2019s campus ahead of Notre Dame-Miami games to speak about the Hurricanes in front of more than 1,000 Irish fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had this tradition where the visiting team would send an assistant coach to this alumni smoker,\u201d said Scott, who was a part of eight national championships between baseball and football. \u201cI was extremely nervous \u2014 probably the largest gathering I\u2019d ever spoken to. I remember listening very intently to Notre Dame\u2019s running backs coach, and the Irish fans were booing him, saying he needed to be fired because of the fumbles the game before. I\u2019m thinking if they\u2019re doing this to him, they\u2019re going to crucify me.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it\u2019s my turn. I get up in front of this old, skinny microphone \u2014 I mean, Knute Rockne might\u2019ve breathed into this thing. So, I touch it and the mic falls. I put it back, did my thing. As I\u2019m speaking, you could hear crickets in the room. I\u2019m sitting there talking about what we\u2019re going to do offensively with (quarterback) Steve Walsh. I went back two years later and made a joke about the microphone, and they didn\u2019t like it. Then again, they didn\u2019t like us very much anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miami and Notre Dame are scheduled to play six more times between now and 2037. Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich told The Athletic the Hurricanes would love to play the Irish every year or every other year if it were possible.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not known how those plans might change if the ACC follows the SEC\u2019s footsteps and adopts a nine-game conference schedule to match the Big Ten and Big 12. But Radakovich believes scheduling 10 Power 4 conference opponents per season is what most P4 schools will aim for in the future.<\/p>\n

Miami\u2019s nonconference schedule over the next few years includes home-and-home series with South Carolina (2026, 2027) and Auburn (2029, 2030) and a showdown with Utah from the Big 12 in 2027. It hasn\u2019t happened yet, but there\u2019s a chance South Carolina could nix the series with Miami and use in-state rival Clemson to hit the SEC\u2019s minimum requirements of one nonconference game against a P4 opponent. Who could Miami fill those vacancies with? Radakovich speculated it would be an SEC, Big 12 or Big Ten opponent that plays its natural rival in league play.<\/p>\n

Notre Dame has future home-and-homes set with Alabama, Michigan, Texas and Florida, in addition to a 12-year agreement with Clemson beginning in 2027. There\u2019s a chance a similar arrangement could be made with Miami, although Irish athletic director Pete Bevacqua believes Notre Dame would benefit from more home-and-home games against the SEC and Big Ten, which includes some historical rivals.<\/p>\n

The Irish would be staring at a scheduling hole if their series with USC is not renewed after this season; negotiations are ongoing. There\u2019s also the issue of Stanford, another annual Notre Dame opponent whose series is set to end this season. The Cardinal could at least become a generic ACC rotation opponent instead of an annual event. Notre Dame has played Stanford every season since 1988, with the exception of 1995-96 and the pandemic-altered 2020 season. The game has stuck on the schedule in part because Notre Dame wanted a warm weather regular-season finale in years when it didn\u2019t travel to USC. Thanksgiving weekend in Palo Alto filled the need.<\/p>\n

When the Notre Dame-Miami series hit its breaking point in 1989, with the revenge cycle swinging back toward Miami, 7-year-old Tyler Hildenbrandt watched from end zone Orange Bowl seats, which were purchased as part of a travel package that included meeting the Notre Dame team the morning after the game. Hildenbrandt still has the T-shirt autographed by that Irish team. Tony Rice and Rocket Ismail are near the left shoulder, just below Lou Holtz.<\/p>\n

Hildenbrandt \u2014 he goes by Ty now \u2014 is co-host of \u201cThe Solid Verbal,\u201d the national college football podcast launched before everyone else tried to start one. Hildenbrandt arrived at the Orange Bowl with his mom in a party of four. They all wore Notre Dame gear, although none of it was provided by Pat Walsh.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs my mom tells it, I have to go to the bathroom, decked out in Notre Dame stuff. A lot of people threw beer at us, which she still talks about to this day,\u201d Hildenbrandt said. \u201cMy heart was definitely pumping. I don\u2019t think I had a full understanding of what safe versus unsafe meant at 7 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cI probably remember the concourse more than the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

They say you can throw the records out in rivalry games. In the Orange Bowl, whatever could be thrown probably was. It was a scene and series that included some of the mythological best of college football and some of the real-life worst. There\u2019s a reason why \u201cCatholics vs. Convicts\u201d is part of the sport\u2019s permanent vocabulary. It\u2019s even referenced in EA Sports\u2019 College Football 2026 video game.<\/p>\n

It left a mark, not just on the Notre Dame administration as it moved to cancel the series or the Miami program that resented the way it was labeled in an infamous T-shirt. The origin of the hate, whether it was Johnson running up the score on Faust or Notre Dame punching first in the tunnel, doesn\u2019t matter. It impacted how Hildenbrandt has covered the sport ever since. It impacted how two fan bases saw each other and themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lifeblood of this whole sport is this passion, and what better way to see it, especially when you\u2019re really young,\u201d Hildenbrandt said. \u201cThere was tangible hatred there. There\u2019s a reason we still talk about it at family functions all these years later. It was a real shared trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Top photo of Chris Zorich and Steve Walsh: Bill Smith \/ Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do you want to share your predictions, analysis or thoughts on Sunday\u2019s Notre Dame-Miami game? Get involved with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":187374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1428,1426,13874,62,222,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-187373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-miami-hurricanes","10":"tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-sports-business","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115117983687714087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}