Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry reboot gaining momentum

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Plenty of signs appear to be pointing toward Notre Dame and Michigan rebooting their heated rivalry that's been on hiatus since 2014. 

On Thursday, coach Brian Kelly told the South Bend Tribune Notre Dame wants to play Michigan "as soon as we can." And on Friday morning, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh seemed to confirm mutual interest between the two programs:

There've been rumblings about the series re-starting for a few years now. With Michigan ousting athletic director Dave Brandon and bringing in Warde Manuel to replace him, along with the hiring of the feisty Harbaugh, it appears Ann Arbor is warming to the idea of playing Notre Dame again. 

It's unlikely, though, that Notre Dame and Michigan would begin a home-and-home series until 2028 at the earliest. Notre Dame has big-ticket home-and-home series between now and then against Michigan State (2016-2017, 2026-2027), Georgia (2017, 2019), Ohio State (2022, 2023) and Texas A&M (2024, 2025), as well as the return of the Purdue series in 2020-2021 and 2024-2026. 

Michigan plays Florida at AT&T Stadium in 2017, then has home-and-home series with Arkansas (2018-2019), Washington (2020-2021), Virginia Tech (2020-2021), UCLA (2022-2023), Texas (2024, 2027) and Oklahoma (2025-2026). With the Big Ten having a nine-game conference schedule, there's no way Michigan could add Notre Dame without overloading its abbreviated non-conference schedule or backing out of a contract with one of its already-scheduled opponents. 

So that means the most likely opportunity for Notre Dame and Michigan to play would be in a one-off neutral-site game, most likely in the Shamrock Series (though the season-opening kickoff series in Arlington or Atlanta would love to host/figuratively print money from a Notre Dame-Michigan game). 

The first hurdle, of course, to re-starting the Notre Dame-Michigan series was to get both parties interested in scheduling the game. Given the recent rhetoric from South Bend and Ann Arbor, that may have been cleared. 

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