Artistic rendering of the end of the 1966 Notre Dame-Michigan State “Game of the Century,” which ended in a 10-10 tie. The Notre Dame players represented are Alan Page (#81), Bob Gladieux (#20), Coley O’Brien (#3), Jim Seymour (#85) and Larry Conjar (#32). (AI-generated illustration/Fighting Irish Preview)
My first real Notre Dame football memory is also a Notre Dame-Michigan State memory.
I was five years old in 1966 when my mom and dad climbed into a motorhome with a group of friends and headed to East Lansing for one of the most anticipated games in college football history: No. 1 Notre Dame against No. 2 Michigan State. I stayed home with my brothers and sister and a babysitter who “made” us watch the game.
Honestly, I wasn’t particularly interested at first. I was five. But as the afternoon went along, the drama kept building. By the end of Notre Dame’s 10-10 tie with Michigan State in what became known as the Game of the Century, I was all in.
Then my parents came home, filled with stories, excitement and emotion about what they had just experienced in East Lansing. That motorhome trip became part of our family history. Mom and Dad talked about it for the rest of their lives, and I can still remember their enthusiasm when they came home that night.
Even at five years old, something registered with me: This Notre Dame football thing was kind of a big deal.
It turned out to be the beginning of something. Sixty years later, I’m still watching Notre Dame football. I’ve attended countless games and eventually turned that lifelong connection into something more, spending three decades talking about the Irish on radio and podcast and writing about Notre Dame football for Fighting Irish Preview.
Now I’m writing about Notre Dame-Michigan State with Caleb, and his experience with this rivalry is completely different from mine. Caleb grew up as Notre Dame-Michigan State was disappearing from the schedule. The teams haven’t played since 2017, meaning an entire generation of Notre Dame students has come and gone without ever seeing the Spartans walk into Notre Dame Stadium.
For Caleb, much of Notre Dame-Michigan State is history. For me, much of that history is memory. Saturday night, we get another one.
A Rivalry That Made Sense
There was a time when nobody had to explain why Notre Dame played Michigan State. East Lansing is only about 160 miles from Notre Dame, and the schools were close enough that in an earlier era, the Irish traveled to Michigan State by train.
In fact, the train became part of the story of that famous 1966 game. Before Notre Dame ever reached Spartan Stadium, star running back Nick Eddy slipped on the icy steps while getting off the train in East Lansing and reinjured his shoulder. Notre Dame’s leading rusher never played in the Game of the Century.
Imagine that happening today: one of the best players on the No. 1 team in the country missing the biggest game of the season because he was injured getting off the train. That’s how far back this rivalry goes.
The game featured two legendary coaches, Notre Dame’s Ara Parseghian and Michigan State’s Duffy Daugherty, and two teams loaded with future NFL talent. Parseghian’s decision to play conservatively late rather than risk giving Michigan State another opportunity to win has been debated ever since. Notre Dame went to Los Angeles the following week, destroyed USC 51-0 and won the national championship.
For most people, the 1966 Game of the Century is college football history. For me, it’s where my Notre Dame football story begins.
When Michigan State Was Always There
By the 1970s, I was attending Notre Dame-Michigan State games myself, and there were plenty of opportunities. The two programs played 36 consecutive seasons from 1959 through 1994. Michigan State wasn’t an opponent that rotated onto the schedule every few years. You simply expected to see the Spartans.
There were Parseghian teams, Dan Devine teams and Lou Holtz teams. There were national championship contenders and disappointing seasons, memorable victories and painful losses. One of my favorite memories came in East Lansing in 1990.
No. 1 Notre Dame found itself trailing Michigan State 19-7 in the fourth quarter. The Irish rallied, and with less than a minute remaining, Rodney Culver scored from a yard out to give Notre Dame an improbable 20-19 victory.
Here’s what I remember most: our seats were in the opposite end zone.
This was 1990. There was no giant video board showing us the replay and certainly no smartphone to pull out and see what had happened. From the other end of Spartan Stadium, we knew something extraordinary had happened. We could see the scoreboard and knew Notre Dame had somehow taken the lead. We just weren’t quite sure how.
It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that I completely understood what had happened, including a fourth-and-seven pass from Rick Mirer that was deflected before somehow landing in Adrian Jarrell’s hands to keep the winning drive alive.
Today we’d watch the replay from six different angles before the extra point. Back then, sometimes you just celebrated and figured out why later.
Notre Dame won eight straight against Michigan State during the Holtz era, but this rivalry was never one in which the Irish got to keep all the good memories.
A Night in the Rain
By the 2000s, Notre Dame-Michigan State had developed a habit of producing games that were entertaining, aggravating and occasionally bizarre.
In 2005, Michigan State built a 21-point lead at Notre Dame Stadium before the Irish rallied to force overtime. The comeback fell just short, with the Spartans winning 44-41 in double overtime.
A year later came a game I remember for an entirely different reason. I wasn’t in East Lansing. I was back home in Fort Wayne, watching from a rain-soaked tent at my parish’s fall festival with a bunch of other Notre Dame fans.
The weather in East Lansing was even worse. The television pictures showed torrential rain pouring down the aisles of Spartan Stadium like an angry river. For most of the night, what was happening on the field didn’t look much better for Notre Dame.
Michigan State led 37-21 in the fourth quarter. Then everything changed.
Brady Quinn and the Irish scored 19 unanswered points, and Terrail Lambert returned an interception for the go-ahead touchdown as Notre Dame somehow escaped with a 40-37 victory.
Back in that festival tent in Fort Wayne, our celebration was just getting started. Yes, I was surrounded by Notre Dame fans, and yes, after that comeback, we were pretty festive late into the night.
That’s the thing about a rivalry that lasts for generations. Eventually, the memories aren’t just about who scored the winning touchdown or what the final score was. You remember where you were, who you were with and how it felt.
Little Giants — and a Different Feeling
Four years later came another game I remember just as clearly, but for an entirely different reason.
In Brian Kelly’s first season, Notre Dame and Michigan State went to overtime tied at 28. The Irish kicked a field goal, and Michigan State appeared ready to attempt one of its own. Instead, the Spartans called “Little Giants.”
Holder Aaron Bates took the snap on a fake field goal and found Charlie Gantt for the game-winning touchdown. Michigan State 34, Notre Dame 31.
What I remember most isn’t the fake field goal. It’s the despair I felt afterward.
Notre Dame football had been struggling for years, and I remember wondering whether the Irish would ever get back to being the powerhouse program I had grown up with and known for most of my life. That Notre Dame wasn’t something I knew from old books or grainy highlights. I had lived it. I remembered Ara and national championships. I had watched the great Lou Holtz teams and the 1988 championship season.
By 2010, all of that seemed increasingly distant. There was something about watching Michigan State celebrate an overtime victory after fooling Notre Dame on a fake field goal that made the distance feel even greater.
We know what happened in the years that followed. Notre Dame eventually returned to the national conversation and began competing on college football’s biggest stages again. But sitting there in the aftermath of Little Giants, none of that was guaranteed.
Sometimes rivalries don’t just mark seasons. They mark eras of your life.
Then It Was Gone
Notre Dame and Michigan State continued playing periodically until the Irish went to East Lansing in 2017 and beat the Spartans 38-18. Then they stopped.
The Megaphone Trophy came back to South Bend that night and has remained there for nine years, not because Notre Dame kept beating Michigan State, but because there haven’t been any games.
College football changed. Conferences expanded. Scheduling priorities changed. Some traditional opponents became less frequent, and others disappeared altogether. Michigan State became one of them.
That’s the Notre Dame-Michigan State rivalry Caleb knows.
For his generation, Michigan State was never simply part of the schedule. Saturday night’s game is a chance to experience something Notre Dame fans of my generation once took for granted.
And from Caleb’s perspective, that’s what makes bringing it back worthwhile. You can watch the old games and know the history, but that’s different from experiencing the rivalry yourself. Rivalries survive because another generation gets its own games, its own players and eventually its own stories to tell.
Two Generations, One More Game
Notre Dame enters Saturday night 2-0 after beating Wisconsin 41-13 and Rice 52-0, outscoring the two 93-13. Michigan State is also 2-0 under first-year head coach Pat Fitzgerald, but the Irish will be a significant step up in competition.
Notre Dame should win. The Irish have more talent, they’re at home and they look like a team with legitimate national championship aspirations.
But this one means a little more to us.
For Caleb, it’s a chance to experience a rivalry his generation has mostly known through stories and highlights. For me, it stretches all the way back to that five-year-old watching the Game of the Century in 1966, and through six decades of games and memories since.
Notre Dame heads back to East Lansing next year. Hopefully, after that, we don’t have to wait another nine years.
College football has changed, but there should always be room for games like this — games with history, a trophy and generations of fans who understand why they matter.
One of us has been watching Notre Dame-Michigan State for 60 years. The other is still making his memories.
Saturday night, we’ll make another one together.