‘I expect my seat to be shaking’: Hurricanes want raucous crowd for Notre Dame game
The Miami Hurricanes know what’s ahead of them.
A top-10 matchup at home against a storied rival to begin a season filled with expectations — does it get much better than that?
When the No. 10 Hurricanes run through the smoke ahead of their night game against No. 6 Notre Dame — kickoff Sunday is set for 7:30 p.m. — they’re expecting a raucous crowd at Hard Rock Stadium.
“When the defense is up,” offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa said, “I expect my seat to be shaking.”
Miami-Notre Dame used to be one of the biggest rivalries in college football. The teams played annually from 1971-1990, but things really hit their peak toward the end, with the final four matchups from 1987 to 1990 all being top-10 affairs. The home team won each of those matchups. The 1988 “Catholics vs. Convicts” game had a documentary written about it.
“That’s gonna be as maniacal as a Miami game should be,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “I think there’s a lot of us here that have experienced those games from the Orange Bowl, Hard Rock, and whatnot, and we expect it to be as loud and as wild as it could possibly be, and we encourage that.”
But this generation of Hurricanes hasn’t had too many chances to see the rivalry in person. Since the annual meetings stopped in 1990, it was two decades before the teams met again in the 2010 Sun Bowl. They have played three other times since then. The Fighting Irish won the first two, although their win in 2012 was vacated, before the Hurricanes won the most recent and only game of that set in South Florida in 2017 — a 41-8 throttling at Hard Rock Stadium.
“They didn’t really show up to play, but they were there,” then-UM coach Mark Richt quipped on the ACC Network about that game during the ACC’s Football Kickoff in Charlotte, North Carolina, last month. “They showed up to witness a 41-8 beatdown from the Miami Hurricanes — a little spanking on the Golden Domers. I’m not really a big fan of Notre Dame to be honest with you because there’s some personal things that happened over the years. I don’t want to get into it, but I’ll tell you how I felt after that game. That’s the happiest — it might have been the most fun I’ve ever had coaching. Part of the reason was my son Jon was coaching with me. He’s up in the booth, and he’s like, ‘Hey dad, can I come down?’ We were beating them so bad. Usually the coaches in the booth don’t come on the field. He said he just wants to come down on the field. I said come on down there.”
Hurricanes linebacker Wesley Bissainthe, a Miami native and Miami Central alumnus, remembers watching that game at home. Trajan Bandy’s second-quarter interception, which he returned to 65 yards for a touchdown to put Miami up 27-0 at halftime, still plays clear in his mind.
Eight years later, Bissainthe, now a senior, is about to experience the rivalry in person for the first time.
“When Trajan Bandy got that interception, that pick-six, the crowd went crazy,” Bissainthe said. “That was crazy to just watch on TV. Now, I’m part of it. So full-circle moment. Can’t wait to re-do that moment.”
Defensive lineman Akheem Mesidor said he watched that 2017 matchup on YouTube after hearing talks about the rivalry over the offseason. He’s looking forward to being part of it now.
“These are the games that you know you train all offseason for,” Mesidor said. “Top-10 matchup. Two great teams going at it and battling. I’m expecting Hard Rock to be packed, because this is not just any regular game. You look back at Miami versus Notre Dame history, it’s always been a great matchup and a pretty, pretty, pretty crazy game. But I know our fans are going to be out there supporting us, and it’s gonna be amazing. I can’t wait.”
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