Overview

Notre Dame football historian Francis Wallace made that observation half a century ago. Like other insiders at the time, he knew of the intense feuds that had quietly simmered for decades between these two proud, tradition-rich football teams. Natural Enemies raises all those icebergs to the surface. John Kryk spent four years researching and writing this landmark book, which the Chicago Tribune has called the "definitive history of the rivalry" in its first edition. Indeed, Natural Enemies is so much more than a mere recounting of old games. The football fates of Michigan and Notre Dame have been intertwined since that cold November day in 1887 when the Wolverines literally taught football to an eager group of Notre Dame students. By the turn of the twentieth century, relations between the teams began to sour significantly. The off-the-field battles over the next sixty-plus years -- some of which Kryk has uncovered for the first time, others of which he sheds dramatic new light on -- were no less intense, no less legendary, than the unforgettable football games these Midwestern titans have played almost annually since 1978. Richly illustrated in this newly updated edition, Natural Enemies weaves these two chronologies together to produce a college-football-rivalry book like no other. Book jacket.

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