John U. Bacon

By beating Penn State on Saturday, Michigan State secured a share of its first Big Ten title in 20 years. It was a big game, but it was far from Michigan State’s biggest.

The biggest game in the Spartans’ long history wasn’t one of their 30 victories over Michigan, their six national title-clinching contests or their three Rose Bowl triumphs.

No, the biggest game in Michigan State history was against Notre Dame in 1966 – and it wasn’t a victory.

A lot of history went into that contest. Both schools had leveraged their football success to raise the profile and prestige of their universities. Both wanted desperately to get into the Big Ten, but Notre Dame was blocked in the ’20s by Michigan’s first big-time coach, Fielding Yost, while Michigan State was blocked in the ’40s by Michigan’s second big-time coach, Fritz Crisler.

Notre Dame finally said to heck with you guys, and went off on its own to become the only independent power with a national following. But Michigan State knew independence wouldn’t work as well for a state school. So the Spartans kept asking the Big Ten to let them in. Watching this unfold, the Irish concluded: Any enemy of our enemy must be a friend of ours.

Thus, in 1948, the Irish told the Spartans: Sure, for the first time in 27 years, we’ll play you. And they’ve kept doing it all but four years since.

The rivalry gave the Spartans added credibility, helping them win national titles in 1951 and 1952. The next year, when the Big Ten finally let the Spartans join, they celebrated by taking the league title in their first year.

The Irish had to wonder if boosting their friends to national prominence had perhaps worked too well. Since the Irish had won their last national title in 1949, the Spartans had won five.

It all came to a head on Nov. 19, 1966, in East Lansing. The radicalism that had already started growing in Ann Arbor, Madison and Berkeley hadn’t yet reached East Lansing or South Bend. Most students there were not yet focused on the draft or civil rights, but on football.

The game attracted 8,000 more fans than Spartan Stadium had seats – and for good reason. Before kick-off, the pundits were already calling it, “The Game of the Century.” Notre Dame entered the game undefeated, and ranked No. 1 in one poll. The Spartans were also undefeated, and ranked No. 1 in the other poll.

The nation would be watching – or trying to. In those days, colleges were allowed only one national telecast per season, and both teams had already used theirs up. But interest in the “Game of the Century” was so great, fans in the South and West wrote over 50,000 letters to ABC. Can you imagine people today writing 50,000 letters – not emails – to anyone, about anything?

It worked – sort of. ABC agreed to show the game on tape delay – which, before the advent of the internet and cell phones, still allowed most fans to watch it hours later without knowing who had actually won.

State scored first, and took a 10-7 lead into half-time. In the second half, Notre Dame managed to kick a field goal – just was enough to tie the game. The Irish got the ball back on their own 30-yard line, with a minute left and a chance to win the game.

But instead of playing to win, Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian started running out the clock. The crowd booed lustily, but Parseghian stuck to his guns. There was no overtime then, and he knew a tie would not cost the Irish a chance at another national title, the way Notre Dame’s narrow loss to Southern California the previous season had given the crown to Michigan State.

Not this time. When Notre Dame swamped Southern California the next weekend, 51-0, Parseghian won his first national title – but he’s been answering for his decision ever since.

The Spartans earned a share of the national title, too. But don’t feel sorry for either team. They played 10 games each, tied one, and shared a national title. Feel sorry for Alabama’s Bear Bryant, whose team won the SEC title, won the Sugar Bowl, didn’t lose to or tie anyone – and won nothing.

And that’s the story of the Game of the Century – the biggest game any college team ever… tied.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism; and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

John U. Bacon

The Notre Dame football team has lost three straight games to Michigan, Michigan State and Stanford. Normally, nobody would care about a 1-3 team that’s finished in the top 10 just three times in the past two decades. But this is Notre Dame, the nation’s first football team with a national following.

It all started with coach Knute Rockne and his best player, George Gipp – more commonly known as “The Gipper.” Thanks to the famous phrase “Win one for the Gipper,” and a 1940 movie starring Ronald Reagan, who played the Gipper, George Gipp remains famous 90 years after his death. He’s also woefully misunderstood.

Gipp was born in 1895, on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula in the U.P. He was Laurium’s best athlete in five sports. He even won a gold watch for ballroom dancing.

But he was no one’s idea of a Boy Scout. He grew up during the U.P.’s copper mining boom, and like the miners, he enjoyed smoking and drinking, playing cards and shooting pool. When he enrolled at Notre Dame in 1916, he was not corrupted by South Bend. South Bend was corrupted by him. When the best poker and pool sharks came in from Chicago, Gipp beat them soundly.

He once said, “I’m the finest free-lance gambler ever to attend Notre Dame” – and he was probably right.

Because this was long before TV, Gipp was not widely recognized, so he could go to the bars unrecognized, bet on himself to score in the next day’s game, then go out the next night and collect.

And he collected often. His junior year, he led the Irish to an undefeated season.

But he only cared about one thing: Iris Tripeer, the governor’s secretary. She cared about him, too – but her parents didn’t, because back then, football players had no way to make an honest living.

Gipp’s letters to Iris display two sides he rarely showed anywhere else: commitment, and passion. “Iris honey I’m mighty lonesome tonight,” he wrote in the summer of 1920, when he worked at the Buick plant in Flint. “Just think of you all the time dear. I want your life to be always happy but if you refuse to believe in me I don’t see how it can be.”

When Gipp’s attempts to impress Iris and her parents fell short by the fall of 1920, his senior season, he became downright self-destructive, doubling his gambling, his smoking and his drinking, even while leading his team to another undefeated season.

But it caught it up with him. He coughed so much at the team’s banquet, they took him straight to the hospital, where they discovered he had strep throat. Today antibiotics can cure it in a week, but they would not be invented for 12 more years.

Rockne telegrammed Iris to come quickly – and she did. Even as Gipp’s body was failing, he was named Notre Dame’s first All-American; Walter Camp tapped him as the nation’s finest back; and the Chicago Cubs offered him a pro contract.

But no accolades could save him. On the evening of December 14, 1920, the editor of the Calumet paper solemnly placed a card in the window that announced George Gipp had died. His death was front page news across the country.

Eight years later, when Notre Dame faced a heavily favored Army team in Yankee Stadium, Rockne passed on to his players Gipp’s final words.

“I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s all right. I’m not afraid.

“Sometime, Rock, when the team’s up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys – tell them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.”

Gipp’s posthumous speech inspired the Irish to pull off a tremendous upset, 12-6.

Of course, only two people know if Gipp really said all that – and they’re both long gone – but Gipp’s love letters do suggest that he had it in him.

Perhaps his greatest honor came decades later. Before Iris Tripeer died in 1975, she showed her granddaughter his letters. She said, “George Gipp was the only man I ever loved.”

No myth can top that.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism; and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

John U. Bacon

The Michigan Wolverines might have the most wins in college football history, and the highest winning percentage, but the Wolverines have never captured the nation’s imagination like the Fightin’ Irish of Notre Dame.

Notre Dame’s success is partly the Wolverines’ fault. Knute Rockne wanted to get his Fightin’ Irish into the Big Ten in the worst way – but Michigan’s Fielding Yost wanted to keep them out even…worser.

Yost probably expected Rockne to take his team and go home – but Rockne had other ideas. He took his team to Chicago and Boston, which had large Catholic populations, and built a following. He also scheduled games in Yankee Stadium – in front of the national media – and in Los Angeles, in front of Hollywood hot-shots.

And that’s why Notre Dame didn’t shrink without the Big Ten, but grew into the only college team with a national following. The sports writers told tales of The Four Horseman, while the movie makers immortalized the Irish with films from “Knute Rockne: All American” – starring young Ronald Reagan as the Gipper – to “Rudy.”

It took Father Ted Hesburgh, Notre Dame’s president from 1952 to 1987, to figure out how to leverage Notre Dame’s success in football to success in academia. What started out as a Podunk private school that would accept live cattle for tuition – I am not making that up – is now among the most respected universities in the world.

But, while Notre Dame’s academic reputation has been steadily rising, the reputation of its football team – which made it all possible – has been steadily falling. The Irish earned at least one national title every decade from the ’20s to the ’80s – 11 total – but haven’t won another since 1988. Worse, Notre Dame has fired three head coaches in the last eight years – including Charlie Weis, just last week.

Part of the problem is Notre Dame’s tradition – which makes them think they can hire just about anyone and he’ll succeed, because it’s Notre Dame. How else can you explain the hiring of Gerry Faust in 1981 from Cincinnati – Moeller High School in Cincinnati, that is? Faust had not coached a single college game, and it showed. He flamed out in five years.

Faust’s successor, Lou Holtz, left the Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish for the South Carolina Gamecocks, under a cloud of suspicion.

After firing two more coaches, Notre Dame had to go searching again in 2005. But, to their surprise, the coach they really wanted, Urban Meyer – who was named after Pope Urban, fer cryin’ out loud – didn’t really want to work for a school that fired its last coach after just three seasons.

Michigan fans, take note.

So, they hired Charlie Weis, a Notre Dame alum whose reputation was built more on hope and hype than any actual accomplishments – a man who had never played or coached a down of college football. His greatest victory at Notre Dame, the joke goes, was a loss to top-ranked Southern Cal by just three points. The Irish were so impressed by this close call, they signed Weis that month, in the middle of his first season, to a 10-year extension worth tens of millions, to make sure he couldn’t go anywhere else. Well, be careful what you wish for.

But there is good news for Notre Dame: U.S. News and World Report just ranked Notre Dame the 18th best university in the country – a higher ranking than the football team has enjoyed in years.

Coach Rockne must be spinning – but Father Ted must be thrilled.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami of Ohio, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.