Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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tied with Ohio State). Often overshadowed, though, is the head-to- head mark against three of the blue bloods in col- lege football history. Oklahoma, Texas and latter Notre Dame was awarded the national ti- tle after a 38-10 trouncing of the Longhorns. • Finally, Notre Dame Alabama rank in the top six for best winning percentage among those who have played at the sport's highest level for at least 100 years. The Fighting Irish possess an all-time mark of 21-4 (.840 winning percent- age) against that revered trio. • Against Oklahoma, Irish are 8-2. Seven of those meetings occurred after the formation of the AP poll in 1936, and in none of those games were the Longhorns ranked lower than 13th. In six of those Notre Dame conquests, Texas was in the top 10, most notably No. 1 for the 1971 and 1978 Cotton Bowls. In the former, the 24-11 Irish victory snapped Texas' 30-game win- ning streak, and in the Notre Dame is 8-1 — and six of the victories oc- curred when the Sooners were in the Associated Press top 10, with four wins coming over top- five squads. • Versus Texas, the is 5-1 against Alabama, with all the meetings oc- curring in the 15-year pe- riod from 1973-87. In all six contests, the Crimson Tide was in the AP top 10. The most epic was the 1973 Sugar Bowl when Notre Dame defeated 11-0 and No. 1 Alabama 24-23 to win the national title. The following year, an 11-0 Crimson Tide team fell to the Irish again, 13-11, this time in the Orange Bowl. Notre Dame was 4-0 the Black Knights by completing 14 passes — many of them to receiver Knute Rockne — for 243 yards in the unveiled, new passing attack. What is often forgotten hired to elevate Notre Dame's football stature nationally while it was getting blackballed re- gionally by the elite West- ern Conference (later the Big Ten). Historians are well versed on the stun- ning 35-13 Notre Dame victory at powerful Army on Nov. 1, 1913, highlighted by Irish passer Gus Dorais lighting up against Alabama icon Paul "Bear" Bryant, the head coach from 1958-82. against Bryant when he was at Alabama is the fact that Notre Dame also is 4-0 in Austin, Texas, ver- sus the Longhorns and 4-0 in Norman, Okla., against the Sooners. The Irish first faced SPEAKING OF 4-0 … Rivaling the 4-0 record is that game was only the start of a four-game road schedule in November that concluded Thanks- giving Day (Nov. 27) with a 30-7 victory at Texas to cap a 7-0 season. It was the year that integrated Notre Dame more into big-time football with its future identity of barn- storming the nation. Notre Dame did not Texas during their water- shed 1913 campaign un- der first-year head coach and athletics director Jesse Harper, who was schedule a home-and- home series with a South- eastern Conference foe until 1970-71 with LSU. Thus, when the national title was at stake between Notre Dame and Ala-