Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Under the Dome Notre Dame–U-M: No Plans To Continue After next year's meeting at Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish and Michi‑ gan Wolverines don't plan to meet again for a long time, unless it hap‑ pens to be in a postseason game. University of Michigan athletics director Dave Brandon told The Detroit News there are no negotiations going on between the two schools for regular-season meetings. "Anyone who says there's going to be a continuation of this rivalry in the near future isn't looking at the football schedules," Brandon said on Sept. 4 at Michigan's Ross School of Business. "Our schedule is booked going out into the early '20s, and my understanding is theirs is, as well. "So my view is the only way we're going to play Notre Dame after next year would be if we run into them in a bowl game or if our schedule al‑ lowed us to have some kind of a neu‑ tral site, one-off game somewhere along the way." Long hiatuses have been common U-M athletics director Dave Brandon said during in this series. Notre Dame and Michi‑ the week leading up to the final Notre Damegan did not play in the 32 seasons Michigan game in Ann Arbor that the school has from 1910-41, and then 34 years from no plans to negotiate a new series with the Irish. photo by lon horwedel 1944-77. Since 1978, the two programs have played almost annually, with two-year breaks in 1983-84, 1995-96 and 2000-01. When Notre Dame announced in September 2012 that it would join the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) — including as a partial member in football starting in 2014 — the scheduling dynamics changed because it required the Irish to play five ACC opponents per year, starting in 2014. Because Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick broke off the series just prior to the start of the 2012 game, the three-game advance notice called for in the contract still allows the Fighting Irish to host the game in 2014.