Michigan Football vs. Notre Dame Rivalry Has Little Effect On College Football

It’s great that Michigan football and Notre Dame will be back at it again soon, but let’s not pretend this is major for college football as a whole.

I was just as excited as most people when I heard that Michigan football would be battling with Notre Dame again in 2018. That’s a great rivalry for the two fan bases and something most everyone wanted to see come back.

To sit here and act like this game reaches far beyond the scope of Ann Arbor and South Bend, though, is to pretend there’s something bigger happening. And there really isn’t.

We can argue for weeks on end about how the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry stacks up against the other greats—like Auburn-Alabama—and make fair points on both sides. That’s a national rivalry, and few people are going to dispute that. If they do dispute that, it’s usually because Michigan hasn’t been competitive recently, but that’s turning around.

When we talk about the Michigan-Notre Dame rivalry, we tend to try to give it greater meaning than it actually has. I remember being shocked when I learned these two storied programs have only played 42 times.

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Auburn and Alabama? 80 meetings. Michigan and Ohio State? 112.

I’m not trying to make the argument that relatively few meetings inherently knocks your rivalry down a bunch of pegs. But it does definitely help put it in its place, which is a few rungs down from where we often pretend it is.

Outside of that, I don’t think the rest of the college football world is all that concerned with the Michigan-Notre Dame game. They probably watch it with the same level of interest and excitement that we have when watching a Clemson-South Carolina game: We know when it’s on, and we’re probably going to at least flip back and forth with another game.

But do we care? Not really.

It’s not like we don’t know how to appreciate these rivalry games that don’t mean much outside of the immediate frame. We do it every year with Minnesota.

Why we’re so fascinated with turning Michigan-Notre Dame into something larger than life is beyond me.

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I love this rivalry and hope it never takes another break as long as I’m around, but folks are never tuning in to this game the same way they tune in to Auburn-Alabama, or the same way they’ll be tuning in to Michigan-Ohio State.

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