Michigan-ND: 1969-1975, the forgotten games

Wolverine1997

Wolverine1997

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Just finished reading "Natural Enemies Updated Edition". Great book on the entire history of Michigan-ND rivalry. From the very beginning to Yost-Rockne, the cold war of the rivalry and the series revival in 1978. I found something very interesting in the book that is literally NOWHERE on the internet. Not even on Bentley Historical Library which is the U-M archives.

From 1969-1975, Michigan and ND played 10 games. You may wonder how is that possible if the series was revived in '78, but these games were never seen by the public eye. Before 1973, Freshmen were not eligible to play college football (save WWII era). U-M and ND got together and decided to scrimmage Freshmen teams and eventually JV squads in 1973 when Freshmen became eligible. Another thing that is very interesting is the coaches at the time, were Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler. Bo and Ara were on the same staff at Northwestern and Ara served as a mentor to Bo. Here is the short passage on it-

Parseghian and Schembechler almost had the opportunity to square off late in the 1970 season because Joyce and Canham (Michigan AD) had flirted with the idea of arranging what ostensibly might have wound up as the first national championship game in Division I-FBS history.

Back in January 1970, the NCAA had passed the legislation to allow an 11th regular season game for football teams, raising the previous limit by one. Neither Michigan nor Notre Dame, though, had scheduled an 11th opponent for 1970, and by mid-November both schools were near the top of the polls with perfect records. That's when Father Joyce came up with the intriguing idea of pitting ND against U-M in a legal game at the end of the regular season- presumably on Sat, December 5- that might well decide the national championship.

There were however Michigan-Notre Dame football games of a different sort during the nine-year period wait for the series resumption. Parseghian and Schembechler arranged for their freshmen teams, and later their JV teams, to square off against one another. The schools split a 10-game series between 1969 and 1975. "There were a certain number of kids that didn't get a chance to play in Varsity games", Parseghian remembered. "So we would set up games on a Friday or a Monday. We had a pretty decent little schedule for them, and it gave the something to look forward to."
Click to expand...

It is very possible "Rudy" played in some of these games during his time at ND. No stats I know of exist since they were just scrimmages done on the practice fields of both schools, but definitely something interesting. The '69-75 series was a tie at 5-5. But there was also a Freshman game in 1917 listed as well when ND's AD convinced Michigan's to have a friendly scrimmage. Here are the scores-

1917- Michigan 19 ND 3 (Ann Arbor)
1969- ND 17 Michigan 7 (South Bend)
1970- Michigan 20 ND 0 (Ann Arbor)
1971- Michigan 20 ND 6 (South Bend)
1972- ND 17 Michigan 7 (South Bend)
1972- Michigan 14 ND 10 (Ann Arbor)
1973- ND 10 Michigan 3 (South Bend)
1973- ND 20 Michigan 3 (Ann Arbor)
1974- Michigan 31 ND 12 (South Bend)
1974- Michigan 14 ND 6 (Ann Arbor)
1975- ND 28 Michigan 0 (South Bend)
 
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