It's Michigan-Notre Dame game week so it's mandatory to post the origins of the rivarly. You certainly have heard that Michigan taught Notre Dame how to play this game. This is true of course, and the details of that meeting are chronicled up front in John Kryk's outstanding book Natural Enemies.
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Sights & Sounds – Notre Dame – Under the Lights 2
More pregame photos here. All the postgame Tom Harmon/98 related thoughts & takes here. Passionately attacking you with miscellanea since 2001, here’s more: Students: The earliest started queuing up around 10:30PM Friday evening as I understand it and they were let in around 4:30PM yesterday. Here they are filing in (on the left), and.. …props to the athletic department for dropping the 4 pack of live games (right, above) on the big boards for a while. The Ross Toss: Love for Stephen Ross and his wallet saturated Ann Arbor all day Saturday, from Desmond leading off with a huge thank you to Ross on GameDay, to the story and full page ad in the game program, to the special break during the game to acknowledge the man, to the massive sign the students propped up (some fans were literally under the C). The even dedicated the coin toss to #$teve which makes one ask, if they used a quarter for the coin toss and handed it to Ross when they were done…is it now technically a $199,999,999.75 donation? Cease and Desist. Still waiting for the bros who blew up my photo for their GameDay sign to reveal themselves and face the music. And by music I mean 7 Nation Army on a loop. Lasers. I haven’t seen lasers like that…
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Historical Context of Denard Robinson, 2010 Notre Dame Game
Given that John Kryk, author of the definitive history of the Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry Natural Enemies, is a mere email away, I had to get his thoughts and observations on the game. This marked the 19th time Kryk has watched the game in person and that’s exactly half of the 38 games played all-time between two schools. A few thoughts from Mr. Kryk: The only Michigan players I’ve seen that are so potentially and routinely electrifying [as Denard] are Anthony Carter and Desmond Howard (in that order). This is no fluke. The drive to open the second half vs UConn was mostly Denard completing 3rd-down after 3rd-down pass, not Denard running for first downs. And the winning drive Saturday was almost all on Denard’s arm, not his legs. He’s a quarterback, not a deluxe running back who keeps defenses honest with his throw. In fact, he tears ’em up with his throws. This game reminds me what Lloyd Carr once told me about the greatness of this series — that neither team will ever play its greatest game of the year, because it’s too early in the year, but because both teams play so hard in this game, and it’s early, you get more killer mistakes. Thus more momentum swings, thus more exciting games. It was the seventh time in…
