Throwback Thursday: Notre Dame Fighting Irish VS Michigan Wolverines 2005

There’s been an inordinate amount of chatter on Notre Dame message boards, social media, and websites about Michigan. Now, we at OFD are guilty AF with a lot of this chatter — but it’s the offseason, and I can’t think of anything better than trashing Michigan whenever the opportunity arises.

2005: Notre Dame Fighting Irish 17, Michigan Wolverines 10

Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

At the time, the Irish were coming off of a big road win against the Pittsburgh Panthers (who then lost the next week to the MAC’s Ohio Bobcats), and fans were excited (really excited) about new Head Coach, Charlie Weis. Still, most pundits didn’t give the Irish much of a chance in their second matchup of the season, and they thought Notre Dame would be exposed in Ann Arbor.

Michigan was ranked #3 in the nation, and the Irish were a fresh #20 after being unranked to begin the year.

Your bulletpoints:

• Notre Dame had two touchdown drives in the first half that consisted of 12 plays. The first went 76 yards and took 2:58 off the clock, while the second went 74 yards and took 4:25 off the clock. Both ended with 5 yard TD passes from Brady Quinn ( Rhema McKnight & Jeff Samardzija).
• The Michigan student body went nuts after two different fumble reviews went Notre Dame’s way and showed their dismay in the classiest of ways by throwing every water bottle in the state of Michigan onto the playing surface. THAT’S 10 CENTS A BOTTLE BRO!
• After the game, Notre Dame rose to #10 in the rankings while Michigan fell to #14. Michigan, in fact, fell out of the rankings entirely a couple of times during the season with losses to the Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Golden Gophers. Their unranking was made complete after losing to the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Alamo Bowl to finish 7-5 on the year. That was the #3 team in the country... lol.

Look... we all know Charlie Weis ended up being extremely exposed himself later on — and he even had these prophetic words after this game when some reporter tried to compare him to Rockne:

“If I answered by dignifying that, [Bill] Parcells and [Bill] Belichick would humiliate me. I’ve just coached two games and they’ve played two games. Let’s come back and revisit that in about 10 years.”

But it was a really good looking win at the time.

Still... this is just another example of the EXTREME (maybe I should say XTREME) way Michigan continually is overrated.

And Charlie Weis beat you in your house. [end scene]