The Forgotten Rivalry

Notre Dame and Northwestern

The Forgotten Rivalry

As crazy as this sounds, there was actually a time when Northwestern was a relevant football school.

Notre Dame and Northwestern are meeting this week in my Action! PC Football 1946 college project. As you can see, they’re tied for the lead in the standings:

This is part of the fun of having all the teams in divisions, by the way. I don’t have to worry about wonky schedules, what to do with independent teams, or arbitrary ranking systems.

Notre Dame and Northwestern have a football rivalry that goes way back. But it’s a “rivalry” only in the loosest sense of the term. The truth is that Notre Dame has dominated Northwestern over the years.

The first Northwestern victory came way back in 1901:

From The Chicago Tribune, October 13, 1901, page 17

It might surprise some of you to know that college football was covered in the newspapers way back then. Actually, not only did the game receive coverage, but some of the teams received better coverage then than they do today.

The first great battle between the two came in 1926. Northwestern were undefeated, and Notre Dame were under the leadership of Knute Rockne. These were the days of the famous Four Horsemen and winning one for the Gipper.

From The Chicago Daily Tribune, October 23, 1926, pages 23 and 36

This was one of the best games in the history of the rivalry, won in the 4th quarter by an impressive Notre Dame passing performance with time running out.

From The Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1926, page 29

From The Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1926, page 31

Northwestern destroyed Notre Dame’s hopes at an undefeated season back in 1935, winning on the final day.

From The Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1935, page 1

And the Notre Dame returned the favor the next season:

From The Chicago Tribune, November 22, 1936, pages 24, 26, and 30

This time it was Northwestern who had been undefeated. The Wildcats had to settle for a joint championship with Michigan in the Big Ten that season.

Unfortunately, the 1946 version of this game was nothing to write home about:

However, my version was a lot more interesting.

We scored first, but Northwestern came back with two touchdowns. They led 14-7 in the third quarter when our running game finally took off.

We won, 20-14, but it wasn’t easy.

I should note that Pat Keefe was not Northwestern’s only quarterback in 1946. This is where things become a little bit dicey. There were 3 main quarterbacks for Northwestern that year:

As you can see — none of these quarterbacks attempted many passes, nor were any of them all that successful when they did pass. Still, Keefe’s 1.8 passer rating is incredibly low. When you combine that with a mere 1.8 yards per carry, you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

We’re in first place in our division for now, but it’s still early. We’ll see what happens.