Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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8 OCT. 30, 2021 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME Start Something With Ohio State By Tyler Horka Next year's Labor Day weekend game at Ohio Stadium is going to be such a spectacle that the college football world is going to be begging for more. Luckily, fans only have a short wait before Notre Dame and Ohio State run it back in South Bend just more than a year later. If both of those games are good ones, why not make them a regular thing? These programs have been two of the five best in the country in the last five years. Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma — and who else? Ohio State and Notre Dame. Easy answers. I'll admit, the obvious answers here are Michigan State or Michigan. Notre Dame has played the former 59 times and the latter 39 times. At various points in Irish history there has been bad blood with both of those schools that reside in the state that borders Indiana to the north. What's the harm in getting a rivalry going with another top-tier program that sits just four and a half hours to the southeast? Notre Dame and Ohio State have only played each other six times. Two of those were played prior to World War II. Notre Dame has not beaten Ohio State since 1936. If that streak is snapped in one of the next two years, it'll remind Notre Dame fans of what a rush it is to beat a program that has been at the peak of its powers. Sure, Michigan State and Michigan appear to be elite this year. But Ohio State is elite every year. Great moments are born from great opportunity. Make The Wolverines An Annual Staple By Todd D. Burlage I fully understand the premise of Notre Dame devising a schedule that ends each regular season in California with either a game at Stanford in odd- numbered years or a game at USC in the even-numbered. The national exposure of playing out west on a busy Thanksgiving football weekend, along with the recruiting opportunities of taking the Notre Dame brand to the talent- rich West Coast top the list. The alternating plan held together nicely for 25 years until 2014 when Notre Dame began playing five ACC opponents each season. ]The five-game ACC commitment forced Notre Dame to ditch several longstanding rivals from its schedule and replace traditional opponents such as Michigan and Michigan State with teams such as Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. There is no backing out of the ACC scheduling agreement. But with the value of the Stanford series rapidly deflating, the time has come for Notre Dame to replace the Cardinal with another annual rival on its schedule, and Michigan is the best option. These two proud programs are separated by only three hours, there's decades of heartbreak and bad blood, and during the last 35 times they played, both teams were ranked in 25 of those games. Now that's a rivalry. It's impossible to argue that resuming an annual series with the biggest regional rival in program history would bring more national anticipation, media attention and scheduling benefit than a fading series against Stanford ever could. Point ✦ Counterpoint: WHICH SCHOOL WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO SEE NOTRE DAME PLAY EVERY YEAR? Many years have passed since Antoni Wyche earned four varsity basketball monograms from Notre Dame, graduated and left to pursue a pro- fessional playing career — 22 to be exact. A senior team captain in 1998-99, Wyche played in 108 games with 64 starts under former Irish head coach John MacLeod from 1995-99 and has since stayed close to the Notre Dame program even while he was playing half a globe away. Having two former college teammates — Mar- tin Ingelsby and Harold Swanagan — serving as assistants to Irish head coach Mike Brey kept Wyche's bond with the program strong and ulti- mately brought him together with his future boss. And on July 5, Wyche found his way back to Notre Dame when Brey hired him as the final piece of an offseason staff reconstruction project. Wyche, 44, returns to his old stomping grounds after a successful 10-year professional playing ca- reer that included stops in Finland, Japan, Jordan and Qatar, before spending the previous 12 years working as an assistant coach at Lehigh (2009-19) and Siena (2019-21). While at Lehigh, Wyche was promoted to asso- ciate head coach and helped lead the Mountain Hawks to 189 wins and two NCAA Tournament appearances. And while at Siena, Wyche helped guide his team to the 2019-20 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title and an automatic bid in the 2020 NCAA Tournament before the event was canceled because of the pandemic. BGI: How did this coaching opportu- nity come about? Wyche: "I've always stayed in close contact with the program. I got to know [Brey] from being out on the road as coaches and he's helped me out with some things, gave me some advice on things and made some calls for me, kind of helped me as part of the Notre Dame family. "I was always looking for the opportunity to get back and work with him." BGI: What can the program and fans expect you to bring to the team? Wyche: "I think one thing that [Brey] wanted was a fresh set of eyes, a different perspective on things. "I'm not a big-man coach or a guard coach, I just coach basketball so I think he just wanted me to come in and help some of these guys with the sense of urgency, playing with a chip on your shoulder and getting the most out of everything. It's a collective effort." BGI: How did your other coaching stops help prepare you for this job? Wyche: "I've been in charge of offenses and defenses at different places. I've taken the lead on some recruiting things at other places. "But here, everyone is an experi- enced recruiter so it's about meshing together and figuring out our plan and the targets to attack." BGI: What did your time at Notre Dame mean to you? Wyche: My time here helped me grow and evolve as a person. I got to experience a lot here, which taught me how to persevere, stay hun- gry and play with a chip on my shoulder, which helped me in my playing career and really, just my life going forward through both the good and the tough times." BGI: What have you learned about the team through your first few months? Wyche: "We have great kids, guys that are go- ing to be really successful in life, good quality guys, and we have plenty of talent here also. "The biggest thing is just taking that next step, getting that edge that we need to survive the gauntlet of the ACC and get the wins that are necessary to get where we desire to go." — Todd D. Burlage Five Questions With … MEN'S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH ANTONI WYCHE WYCHE