Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com OCT. 26, 2019 9 UNDER THE DOME 5 Notre Dame players on the 2019 roster who hail from the state of Michigan as they began preparation for the Oct. 26 contest at the Uni- versity of Michigan. Four of them play defensive end for associate head coach Mike Elston: seniors KHALID KAREEM (Detroit), Adetokunbo Ogundeji (West Bloomfield) and Daelin Hayes (Belleville), plus sophomore Ovie Oghoufo (Lathrup Village). Junior walk-on running back Cameron Ekanayake (Niles) rounds out the quintet. Ogundeji and Hayes — sidelined the remainder of this season because of a torn labrum — are both eligible to return for a fifth season in 2020. 10-1 Record for Notre Dame under 10th-year head coach Brian Kelly in games the week after a bye, with a nine-game winning streak since 2012. Three of those victories have been against ranked teams, although none in the top 10. Here is the chronological list: 2010 — Defeated No. 15 Utah, 28-3 2011 — Lost to unranked USC, 31-17 2012 — Defeated unranked Miami, 41-3 2013 — Defeated unranked USC, 14-10 2013 — Defeated unranked BYU, 23-13 2014 — Defeated unranked Syracuse, 31-15 2014 — Defeated unranked Navy, 49-39 2015 — Defeated No. 21 Temple, 24-20 2016 — Defeated unranked Miami, 30-27 2017 — Defeated No. 11 USC, 49-14 2018 — Defeated unranked Navy, 44-22 58 Years old Brian Kelly becomes Oct. 25, the eve of the Michigan game. The lone Fighting Irish head coach who was older while still patrolling the sidelines was Lou Holtz, who stepped down in November 1996 at age 59 and 10 months. Kelly's 122 career games as a head coach at Notre Dame entering the Michigan game trail only Holtz's 132. 58 Turnovers generated (32 interceptions and 26 fumbles) by Notre Dame's 1977 national champions, a school record, or at least since the post-World War II era, that is safe to say will never be broken. This included six in the 38-10 Cotton Bowl victory versus No. 1 Texas. We bring this up because entering the Oct. 12 game versus USC, Notre Dame's 14 forced turnovers (eight fumbles and six interceptions) were tied for second in the country, behind only San Jose State's 15. The 14 also matched the total Notre Dame forced in a full season in 2011, 2015 and 2016. The most in head coach Brian Kelly's 10 seasons was 25 in his first season (18 interceptions and seven fumbles). Notre Dame was on pace to reach at least 30 for the first time since 2002, when under first-year head coach Tyrone Willingham the team forced 33 (21 interceptions and 12 fumbles). 1943 Marked the last time Notre Dame and Michigan played a football game in October — until this year — rather than the traditional first half of September. That Oct. 9, 1943 meeting was the first time in college football history that the No. 1 (Notre Dame) and No. 2 teams met since the start of the As- sociated Press poll in 1936. Head coach Frank Leahy's Fighting Irish won easily, 35-12, to capture the first of his four national titles. The two schools have met 32 times since 1978, with nine of them coming as the season opener for Notre Dame, most recently a 24-17 Fighting Irish victory last year. Seventeen other times it was the second game in the schedule. The latest the two had met in those 32 years was the fourth game in 1997 and 2012. 2027 Is the next season that the Fighting Irish football team is slated to play in the state of Michigan, after this year's Oct. 26 matchup with the Wolverines in Ann Arbor. Notre Dame is scheduled to play at home versus Western Michigan in 2020 and Michigan State in 2026, but the next journey into its bordering state isn't until facing the Spartans in 2027 because no other games or conversation with the University of Michigan ap- pear to be in the works for future meetings. From 1948-2019, the only five years in which a school from Michigan was not represented on the Notre Dame football schedule were 1953, 1958, 1995, 1996 and 2015. ✦ BY THE NUMBERS PHOTO BY MIKE MILLER