Notre Dame Attempts To Avoid Double Play From Jim Harbaugh
In 2008, Jim Harbaugh coached his first game in Notre Dame Stadium, a 28-21 defeat in his second season with the Stanford Cardinal.
Two years later, Harbaugh returned to the scene with a 37-14 victory against first-year head coach Brian Kelly’s Irish. The 12-1 record that year would be Stanford’s greatest finish in 70 years, and Harbaugh parlayed that run into becoming the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, who he guided all the way to the Super Bowl in 2013.
He also defeated the Fighting Irish 45-38 in 2009, which turned out to be Charlie Weis' final game as the Notre Dame head coach.
This year at Michigan he will attempt to become the sixth head coach in history to defeat Notre Dame while serving in that role at different schools.
What would make Harbaugh unique, however, is that he also quarterbacked his alma mater, Michigan, to back-to-back conquests of Notre Dame in 1985 (20-12) and 1986 (24-23), the latter in Lou Holtz’s debut as the Fighting Irish head coach.
In a week where Harbaugh issued a release against his "enemies" that referred to a potential exit strategy from Michigan, a victory against No. 8 Notre Dame would go a long way toward applying salve to his career 1-10 mark with the Wolverines versus top-10-rated foes.
Chronologically, the five other coaches since the 20th century who toppled Notre Dame at different schools are:
• Howard Jones, Iowa/USC — In 1921, Jones’ Hawkeyes handed Knute Rockne’s 10-1 Irish their lone setback (10-7). At USC from 1925-40, Jones’ Trojans would post six wins, the first in 1928 and the last in 1939.
• Johnny Majors, Pitt/Tennessee — The 1956 Heisman Trophy runner-up to Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung defeated the Irish at Pitt in 1975 (34-20) and with the national title-winning Panthers in 1976 (31-10), and did the same at alma mater Tennessee in 1979 (40-18) and 1991 (35-34).
• Dennis Erickson, Miami/Oregon State — His Hurricanes ended Notre Dame’s school-record 23-game winning streak in 1989 (27-10), and then his Beavers snapped a seven-game Irish winning streak in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl (41-9).
• Nick Saban, Michigan State/Alabama — His Spartans defeated Notre Dame three straight seasons in 1997-99, and then he led the way as the Crimson Tide rolled to a 42-14 victory in the BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 7, 2013.
Saban and Northwestern’s Ara Parseghian — who later would lead the Irish to two consensus national titles and a shared one — are the only two coaches to post a 4-0 ledger versus Notre Dame since the turn of the 20th century. Parseghian achieved the feat from 1959-62.
• Todd Graham, Tulsa/Arizona State — Both came against Kelly, the first in 2010 with Tulsa (28-27) and then at Arizona State in 2014 (55-31).
He nearly became the first to achieve it with three teams, but Notre Dame rallied to a 15-12 win against his 2011 Pitt squad.
----
• Talk about it inside Rockne’s Roundtable
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, Blue & Gold Illustrated.
• Follow us on Twitter: @BGINews, @BGI_LouSomogyi, @BGI_MikeSinger, @CoachDeDario and @AndrewMentock.
• Like us on Facebook.