Catholics vs Convicts: The three words that still define Notre Dame-Miami football rivalry - USA Today

For a generation of college football fans, there are three words that conjure up vivid memories of an era of the sport and, more specifically, two teams that helped define it.

The phrase famously emblazoned on T-shirts for the 1988 matchup between No. 1 Miami and No. 5 Notre Dame is a part of college football lore. It turned a classic of a game, a 31-30 Fighting Irish victory over the reigning national champion Hurricanes, into a cultural moment that transcended the sport.

Those words have forever connected a pair of private schools separated by more than 1,300 miles and helped turn them into rivals.

On Saturday, Nov. 7, the latest chapter in the eventful history between Notre Dame and Miami will be written, when the Hurricanes take on the Irish in a Week 10 game with significant College Football Playoff and national championship implications.

The parallels between this year’s game and the iconic one from 38 years ago are difficult, if not impossible, to miss. Miami is ranked No. 1 while Notre Dame is No. 6, only one spot behind where it was in 1988 in what’s now known as the US LBM Coaches Poll. The game will be played in Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana, under the shadow of Touchdown Jesus. There were nearly more connections thanks to Miami coach Mario Cristobal, a former Hurricanes offensive lineman, but his freshman season was unfortunately one year after the fabled 1988 matchup.

As Miami and Notre Dame prepare for their latest face-off, here’s a look back at “Catholics vs. Convicts” and the teams’ famed 1988 meeting:

The 1988 matchup between Miami and Notre Dame already had no shortage of stakes. The Hurricanes were the top-ranked team in the sport, the reigning national champion riding a 36-game regular-season win streak, while the Fighting Irish were undefeated, ranked in the top five and were trying to show they belonged among the best teams in the sport in their third year of coach Lou Holtz’s program rebuild.

Then, as if the game couldn’t get any bigger, a T-shirt was brought into the world and permanently etched into college football history.

Patrick Walsh, a Notre Dame student at the time, had a side venture in which he designed, printed and sold T-shirts, along with his friend, Joe Fredrick, a captain on the Irish’s men’s basketball team. Heading into the Irish’s game against Miami in 1988, they saw an opportunity to capitalize on the excitement around the matchup with a shirt made just for it.

On one side, it read “ND vs. Miami” with the date of the game (Oct. 15, 1988), which was plastered over with a message of “Unfinished Business,” a reference to Miami’s 58-7 win over Notre Dame in 1985: a game in which the Hurricanes were accused of running up the score in what would be Irish coach Gerry Faust’s last game at the school.

On the other side, though, is where the shirt became famous — or, perhaps more accurately, infamous. On it, it read “Catholics vs. Convicts,” with Catholics in green (one of Notre Dame’s primary colors) and Convicts in orange (one of Miami’s main colors).

It was an alliterative nod to Notre Dame’s identity as a Catholic institution, but also to a Miami program that, while winning national titles, had seen several of its players get arrested. The shirts were a hit, with more than 14,000 of them reportedly getting sold.

While making money, they generated their fair share of controversy. Referring to a Hurricanes’ roster populated largely by Black players was criticized as trafficking in harmful racial stereotypes.

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Dr. Richard Piece, an associate professor of American studies at Notre Dame, said in a 2016 ESPN documentary on the 1988 game and its iconic shirts. “To me, it’s ungracious. It’s not very Catholic of you to term somebody a convict without any regard for their reality.”

In that same ESPN documentary, then-Notre Dame nose tackle Chris Zorich said he laughed when he first saw the shirts because, as he put it, “I knew we weren’t angels. We were fighting before games and stuff.” His Irish teammate, free safety Pat Terrell, was a Florida native who knew a lot of the Miami players and said, “They weren’t convicts. They were good ball-players.”

Patrick Creadon, the director of the ESPN documentary who was a Notre Dame student in 1988 and who was good friends with Walsh, described the shirts in 2016 as “kind of tacky.”

At least to some of the Hurricanes players, the shirts didn’t cause that much of an uproar.

"We were the young, rough and tumble, say-anything, do-anything," Steve Walsh, Miami’s starting quarterback that season, told the Palm Beach Post, a part of the USA TODAY Network. "And they're supposed to be the holier-than-thou golden boys. We knew who we were. But we had a reputation. And we didn't mind that reputation, quite honestly. We weren't offended."

Perhaps the only thing more memorable than the “Catholics vs. Convicts” shirts was the game itself.

Tensions flared even before the opening kickoff, with Notre Dame and Miami players shoving each other near the tunnel onto the field at Notre Dame Stadium. 

The game itself lived up to its immense hype, with the teams trading touchdowns and the lead for much of the afternoon. Trailing 31-24 in the fourth quarter, Miami went for it on fourth down in the Notre Dame red zone. Walsh found running back Cleveland Gary for a first down before Gary attempted to stretch the ball out across the goal line. The ball came loose and was recovered by the Irish at the 2-yard line, though Hurricanes coach Jimmy Johnson believed Gary was down before losing control of the ball.

Miami rallied from that setback, though, scoring a touchdown with 45 seconds remaining to get within one, 31-30. Instead of kicking the extra point, Johnson went for the two-point conversion and the win, but a Walsh pass was batted down by Terrell. The game is widely considered one of the best of that era in college football, with USA TODAY ranking it in 2002 as the seventh-best game of the previous 20 years in the sport.

It was the Hurricanes’ first regular-season loss since September 1985 and served as the signature win for an Irish team that went undefeated and won the national championship.

To this day, it’s Notre Dame’s most recent national title.

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