Catholics vs. Convicts

It’s the rivalry that would go down in college football history as one of the greatest of all time. The Fighting Irish and The Miami Hurricanes. But what makes this rivalry so special is the way the fire was ignited, and that was by a t-shirt.

In 1985 the Fighting Irish had one of the worst seasons in Notre Dame history under head coach Gerry Faust. Faust announced his resignation a week before the Miami game. The Hurricanes clobbered the Irish in their last game of the season. Jimmy Johnson, the head coach of Miami showed no compassion. Miami won that game 58-7. During the 1985 season, Pat Walsh and his best friend Patrick Creadon arrived at Notre Dame as freshmen. Walsh had a dream of one day walking on to Notre Dame’s basketball team in the 80’s.

The 80’s were an interesting time to say the least. American culture was changing drastically, and these two programs were following the mark to a tee. David Whitley, writer for the Orlando Sentinel explained the two schools, “here you have the ultimate establishment school Notre Dame, win one for the Gipper, and then you had Miami, the ultimate antiestablishment team you know, if they were anything, they were the win one of the stripper they had in the locker room”. Miami had a reputation and they carried it proudly. They were known in college football as the bad boys who enjoyed being bad. They were the trash-talking, stick it to your face, celebratory team. This bad boy mentality seemed to stem from head coach Jimmy Johnson. Johnson was known to never tell the players how to act. Instead, he expressed to them, “Play the way you know how to play.” and would allow the players to interpret that in the way that they wanted. About twenty hours north of Miami, there was another team, who played with a totally different set of rules, The Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The Irish took doing the right thing very seriously. Americans saw them as prep boys who wore their white hats proudly. Notre Dame is one of the most prestigious schools and football programs in the nation. But, in lieu of their last five seasons, Notre Dame was a team with a prestigious past but not a prestigious present, or future for that matter.

After the devastating 1985 loss to Miami, something ignited the Irish. They wanted to win, but more importantly they wanted to beat Jimmy Johnson. In 1977 Lou Holtz became the head coach of Arkansas stealing the title right under Johnson's nose. Johnson took it personally and decided to take a head coaching job at Oklahoma, where he would coach for five seasons before moving to Miami. A few years later, Holtz took a head coaching position in Minnesota, with one condition in his contract. His contract included a, “Notre Dame clause” stating that if he were to be offered a head coaching position from Notre Dame, he would leave Minnesota. In 1986, Lou Holtz received a call, and the fighting Irish received a new coach.

Lou Holtz came into a broken program and rebuilt a brand-new team. Many of the scholarship players had left the program after the ’85 season allowing Holtz to recruit some of his own players. Tony Rice, a skinny quarterback from South Carolina was awarded a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, but because of his test scores, he was not allowed to be on the team for a year. Because of these circumstances, Holtz was forced to practice and play walk-ons opening the door for Pat Eilers. Pat was a transfer student from Yale who desperately wanted to wear the golden helmet. Eilers met Pat Walsh early in the year and became friends through their mutual dream to be a walk-on for Notre Dame.

Walsh wanted to help his family with financial stability and he did so by creating a black-market product; bootleg t-shirts. Walsh made multiple t-shirts of Notre Dame apparel, bringing in one dollar of revenue for each shirt. He quickly became known as the t-shirt man and was warned by Notre Dame staff that apparel can only be sold at the bookstore. Walsh went to the bookstore to see if they would sell his shirts. He was turned down, but he would continue to sell the shirts under the radar.

In 1987 both Miami and Notre Dame were winning and winning consistently. When the two met, Miami beat Notre Dame in a shut-out. The hurricanes would go on to win the National Championship. The 1988 season rolled around, and the defending National Champions were ranked number eight. The undermined team continued to win by large margins and they quickly regained their number one spot in the polls. Joe Frederick, the captain of the Notre Dame basketball team saw the SportsCenter story of two Miami players that had been arrested. And from this, Frederick coined the phrase, “Catholics vs. Convicts” and took the idea to Walsh.

When Walsh was pitched the idea for the shirts he said, “No way, I’ll get kicked out of school for that.” Frederick told Walsh that he would just be the middle man. Walsh would just make the shirts, give them to Frederick and he would handle the rest from there. Walsh agreed and made one hundred t-shirts. When he got to Frederick's apartment, he took one out of the box to show and a crowd formed around him. In ten minutes, the shirts were gone. The two were continuing to make and sell the shirts and somehow it remained under the radar.

Four weeks before the Miami game, Notre Dame played Michigan State beating them 20-3. Walsh and his roommate Patrick attended the game and when the game ended they did not head back to South Bend. Instead they headed over to Ann Arbor to catch the last quarter of the Michigan, Miami game. The two snuck into the game and after Miami’s’ nail-biting victory, Walsh and Patrick snuck into the Hurricanes locker room leaving three things: two t-shirts and a message that said, “tell Jimmy Johnson that the Irish are coming.”

In the college football world, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish were the crème de la crème of programs and whatever they said, everyone believed. The shirts came into the public eye and the shirt meant more than just football. It was a showcasing of good vs. evil. The creators of the shirt led people to believe that Notre Dame was full of kind and compassionate students, while the students at Miami were juvenile and raunchy. One week before the game, star players, Mike Stonebreaker and Tony Rice attained the legendary shirts and the rivalry continued to grow. At the end of the week, Walsh and Frederick sold 2,000-3,000 shirts.

The game of the year was finally upon them. Miami was in South Bend and they were ready to beat Notre Dame for the fifth time in a row. The stadium was full. An unbought ticket could not be found anywhere, and neither could the shirts. Everywhere that you looked in the stadium, someone was wearing a “Catholics vs. Convicts” shirt. During warm-ups, the teams broke out in a fight. Leon Searcy from Miami said that, “it was a bar fight, if we had stools we would be hitting each other with them.” The fight made the game that much more exciting. Notre Dame scored first, but Miami was quick to answer. At the half, the teams were tied 21-21. After the half, the game remained close, but Miami found themselves down by seven in the fourth quarter. With an underthrown pass, Andre Brown trapped the ball bringing Miami up to a one-point defect with forty-five seconds left on the clock. With the fact that there was no overtime in college football at this time, Jimmy Johnson calls for a two-point conversion. Steve Walsh, the quarterback for the hurricanes, got the ball in the pocket and threw off of his backfoot to Leonard Conley. The ball was batted down by Pat Terrell, ending the game with Notre Dame winning by one point.

Notre Dame went on to win the 1988 National Championship and the team went down to be one of the greatest teams in Notre Dame history. Pat Walsh’s dream came true too. He became a walk-on for the Notre Dame basketball team. His dream however was short-lived. The dean of students called Walsh and said he wanted every single penny from the notorious shirts in his office. Frederick was punished for his actions as well, but Walsh was kicked off the team and never played a game in the fighting Irish uniform.

The 1988 Miami, Notre Dame matchup is one of the best rivalry games in college football history. Jimmy Johnson said in an interview with ESPN that, “It was a great game. History will show, they were the better team.” The game was quintessential, but the hype around the game made it that much better. A broke college kid looking for some way to help his family out changed the entire attitude for this matchup. Three words would push these two teams to be historical. “It was one of the most passionate settings that I have ever been around in any sport, I think the t-shirt really helped elevate this game. It even gave it a name that even lasts today. The Catholics vs. The Convicts.” (Brent Musburger, CBS commentator)