Could the Notre Dame-Michigan series come off hiatus?
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly is optimistic it could the first heated college rivalry to resume play after this decade's cycle of conference realignment ended historic, intense series like Texas-Texas A&M, Missouri-Kansas and Pitt-West Virginia. While the Notre Dame-Michigan game has only been played 42 times, it was always one of the more frenzied games of the season.
“I think we’re going to see it happen,” Kelly said on NFL Network's "Rich Eisen Show" Wednesday. “I think it’s trending up. It’s something that we need to get in line to get that going. I think that’s something that everybody wants to get going and get Michigan back on the schedule.
"… I think that sentiment is coming back to the forefront of where college football needs to be and some of those classic rivalries coming back together. I know we’re going to be working hard to see if we can get that done.”
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Where a Notre Dame-Michigan game could fit on either program's respective schedules remains to be seen.
Notre Dame has home-and-home series scheduled with powerhouses Michigan State (2016-2017), Georgia (2017, 2019), Ohio State (2022, 2023) and Texas A&M (2024, 2025), as well as a re-start of the Purdue series (2020, 2021; 2024, 2025). The Irish will play five ACC opponents annually and will continue rivalry games against Navy, Stanford and USC, locking up eight games on their schedule per season. Notre Dame also has a 2018 game scheduled at Northwestern.
Michigan, meanwhile, opens the 2017 season against Florida at AT&T Stadium and has home-and-home series scheduled with Arkansas (2018, 2019), Washington (2020, 2021), Virginia Tech (2020, 2021), UCLA (2022, 2023), Texas (2024, 2027) and Oklahoma (2025, 2026). The rest of its 2017 non-conference schedule is already filled out with home games against Cincinnati and Air Force, as the Big Ten transitions to a nine-game conference schedule in 2016.
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Given both program's commitments, it would seem unlikely Notre Dame and Michigan could re-start their home-and-home series until at least 2028. But Notre Dame could try to set up a meeting with Michigan in its annual Shamrock Series game -- Detroit's Ford Field would be a natural destination, or the two programs could look at a game in New York or Chicago, perhaps -- and play it as a one-off game every few years until it could be realistically re-started as a home-and-home series.
And even if Notre Dame and Michigan only play once or twice in the next 10-15 years, it'd still be good for college football to get one of its best rivalries back.