Just yesterday I received a book in the mail courtesy of Poops Ahoy (I’m still not going toilet shopping with her) titled, “The Perfect Rivals,” documenting the Notre Dame-Miami football rivalry that absorbed the attention of college football in the late 80’s.
The game I’m going to talk about is the ’88 game in South Bend where the Hurricanes were ranked #1 and the Fighting Irish were 4th. The game was nationally televised on CBS. The game was dubbed Catholics vs. Convicts named from a t-shirt that perfectly captured the atmosphere of it. Before the game even began the two teams were involved in a shoving match. I remember seeing this at the time and thinking, “oh yeah, this one is going to live up to the hype.” Needless to say if you knew anything about Miami’s team behavior for 25 YEARS!, you’d understand why Notre Dame were considered the good guys that day. Even people who as a rule hated the Fighting Irish were cheering for them. I was in that group.
The game ended in a 31-30 Notre Dame win breaking up a Miami two-point conversion having just scored a touchdown a moment before. Those type of games and rivalries are what indeed make football worth watching. In closing, again…I’m still not going toilet shopping with Poops Ahoy.
Until next time. 🇺🇸
A Fifth of Brian 