Michigan
Looking back at Notre Dame’s 2002 win over Michigan
This week’s Throwback Thursday takes us back to a thrilling moment in Notre Dame football history, captured in Gerard Meskill’s 2002 review for Scholastic Magazine. The clash between Notre Dame and Michigan was a rollercoaster of emotions, marked by both sloppy play and breathtaking highlights. This game stood out as Notre Dame’s first victory over a top-10 opponent in four years, making it a landmark achievement for head coach Tyrone Willingham. Despite the chaotic gameplay, with six fumbles and two interceptions, the Irish emerged victorious by a narrow two-point margin. The win propelled Notre Dame to a 3-0 start for the first time since 1996 and broke a four-year drought against their arch-rivals.
Quarterback Carlyle Holiday, who was new to the rivalry, led the team with determination, highlighting the significance of the win for the program and its fans. The game was a mix of missteps and triumphs, showcasing the unpredictability and excitement that college football fans cherish. Notably, the Irish overcame early-season doubts about their offense, scoring their first offensive touchdown in this game. The victory ignited a wave of enthusiasm and hope, setting the stage for the rest of the season.
The following excerpt is from the 2002 Notre Dame Football Review in the Scholastic Magazine, written by Gerard Meskill.
What a Rush!
It was so ugly and, yet, so beautiful. Notre Dame’s first win against a top-10 foe in four years – against rival Michigan no less – saw the two teams lose a combined six fumbles and two interceptions. In the end, the scoreboard showed that the Irish were two-point victors over the Wolverines, and that was all that mattered to head coach Tyrone Willingham.
“We did not win pretty today, but we did win, and I can be happy with that,” he said after the game.
So, too, can the Irish faithful. The victory made the No. 20 Irish 3- 0 for the first time since 1996. It also was the first time Notre Dame defeated Michigan since the Wolverines entered South Bend as the defending National Champions in 1998. In fact, it only was the second time that the two traditional rivals met since that game, as the long-time series took a two-year hiatus following the 1999 season.
“Nobody [on this team] has really played Michigan before,” said Irish quarterback Carlyle- Holiday. “To beat a team like Michigan, ranked No. 6 in the country, was a big win for us, the whole football program and the community around here. We just got to build on it. There will be so much more enthusiasm and energy running through the players for the next couple of weeks.”
Notre Dame entered the contest with many doubts, not the least of which revolved around its offense. In the team’s opening wins against Maryland and Purdue, the offense had failed to score a single offensive touchdown.
The team put those doubts to rest early in the contest. The Irish opened the game with the football at their own 20-yard line. After overthrowing receiver Arnaz Battle, Holiday found wide receiver Maurice Stovall wide open at midfield, and the true freshman ran for another 11 yards to the Michigan 39. Three plays later, on third and two, Holiday scrambled for a 10-yard gain, and the Wolverines committed a holding penalty, which added 10 more yards to the Irish drive. Five plays later, halfback Ryan Grant trotted into the end zone for Notre Dame’s first offensive touchdown of the season.
“It is critical to score on the first drive. We went down and executed when we needed to and put it in the end zone,” Willingham said. “I believe that it was a tremendous boost to our offense’s confidence.”
Despite the offense’s newfound confidence, it would not be long before it sputtered once more. Burning the next three possessions, the Wolverines lost a fumble and blocked an Irish field-goal attempt. Notre Dame then regained the ball at its own 25. A holding call on first down moved the Irish 10 yards farther back. On second and 20, the Irish made their first major mistake in this comedy of errors, as Holiday delivered a strike to Wolverines cornerback Marlin Jackson, who returned the gift untouched for a 15-yard score.
Three possessions later, in the second quarter, Michigan again found itself in position to score, as it stormed to a fourth and nine at the Irish 14. However, Irish nose guard Cedric Hilliard broke through to block Troy Neinberg’s attempt, avenging the Wolverines’ block on kicker Nick Setta in the first quarter.
The Irish gained only 15 yards on the ensuing possession before they were forced to punt the ball back to the Wolverines. Michigan strong safety Julius Curry returned the punt 9 yards to the Michigan 25, but an illegal block at the start of the return pushed the Wolverines back to their own six-yard line, where they were whistled for illegal procedure on first down. Three plays later, facing third and seven, Wolverines quarterback John Navarre dropped back into his own end zone and motioned to throw the ball downfield when Irish right end Justin Tuck broke through the Michigan line to tip the pass. However, Courtney Morgan was caught holding Tuck in the end zone, resulting in a safety on the Wolverines and a two-point Irish lead.
Notre Dame did little with its safety-induced possession, but it recovered the ball at Michigan’s 27-yard line after receiver Tyrece Butler fumbled on the first play following the Irish punt. Four plays later, Holiday completed the scoring drive with his feet, as he took it himself for the 3-yard score, giving Notre Dame a 16-7 halftime advantage. It appeared as though Holiday fumbled the ball at the 1-yard line, but officials nonetheless ruled the play a touchdown.
“Holiday adds a very, very different dimension to offenses most people are going to see because of his ability to run,” said Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr. “That loosens, somewhat, your inside defense.”
The frenetic pace of the football game slowed considerably in the third quarter, with both teams taking turns punting until Michigan gained possession at its own 26 with six minutes left in the quarter. Navarre, who had been largely inconsistent throughout the first half, found some rhythm as he pushed the offense to the Irish 2-yard line on the strength of three consecutive long completions. However, the Irish defense held the goal line, forcing the Wolverines to settle for a 19-yard field goal, cutting their deficit to 16-10.
Battle then fumbled Philip Brabbs’ kickoff at the Irish 32-yard line; it was recovered by Brabbs himself. Halfback Chris Perry led the scoring charge this time for Michigan, carrying five times, including a 2-yard run into the end zone with four seconds left in the third quarter, giving the Wolverines a one-point advantage.
The Irish, trailing for the first time in the season, answered right back to start the fourth quarter. Holiday completed two long passes to wide receiver Omar Jenkins, including a backbreaking 47-yard bomb from the Michigan 49-yard line that set up first and goal at the 2.
“We fought back in the third quarter, and I thought the most disappointing play of the game was the long pass to start the fourth quarter,” said Carr. “We had just taken the lead, 17-16, begun to run the football relatively well, and felt good at that stage, but Notre Dame did a good job.”
Grant finished the drive with a 3-yard touchdown run after fullback Tom Lopienski ran for a loss on the previous play. Holiday was sacked on Notre Dame’s two-point attempt, keeping the Irish lead at 22-17.
Michigan’s Perry fumbled on the next possession, and safety Glenn Earl recovered the loose ball at the Wolverines’ 43. Grant rushed three times for 17 yards before Holiday was sacked for a loss of 3 yards, setting up third and five at Michigan’s 26. However, the Irish were whistled for holding on the play. Carr opted to decline the call, which would have set Setta’s field-goal attempt as far back as 56 yards. Instead, he hit the 46-yard attempt, giving the Irish an eight-point advantage at 25-17.
“I thought about that penalty, and yet Setta’s going to make that kick,” said Carr. “I saw him before the game. I don’t think 10 yards would have made a difference.”
The Wolverines and Irish exchanged possessions before Michigan began its final scoring drive with 7:03 to play. Five consecutive completions by Navarre and a quarterback scramble pushed Michigan to Notre Dame’s 3-yard line. After a false start and two incomplete passes, the Wolverines faced third and goal at the 8. Irish cornerback Vontez Duff was shaken up on the previous play and removed himself from the field. However, the Irish coaching staff did not see him leave, and they lined up with only 10 men. Navarre found tight end Bennie Joppru wide open in the end zone, connecting with him for an 8-yard touchdown with 2:53 remaining.
“We made a mistake,” acknowledged Willingham.
Predictably, the Wolverines lined up to attempt the two-point conversion after the touchdown. The Irish still only had 10 men on the field, but cornerback Shane Walton recognized the error and wisely called timeout. With the Irish back at full strength, Navarre rolled out of the pocket and fired a pass to the corner, but a sprawling Walton batted the ball down, preventing a certain game-tying completion.
“[Willingham] pointed to me and said somebody needed to make a play,” said Walton. “That’s what I was trying to do.”
The Irish got the ball back with less than three minutes to play, but they were unable to run out the clock. Joey Hildbold punted out-of-bounds for 42 yards to the Wolverines’ 30. With 1:28 left to play, Navarre again took the field to try to rally Michigan once more. He managed to complete one pass and run for a first down before Walton intercepted his third-and-15 desperation hurl. The pick fittingly concluded a game mired by turnovers, as the Irish harmlessly knelt out the clock for a 25-23 victory.
“It’s indescribable to say what it means [to beat Michigan],” said Jenkins. “I think it may have been the biggest game of the season. I felt it had to be the biggest game this weekend in college football.”
Despite the fact that ESPN College Game Day’s crew did not agree with Jenkins (it chose the Ohio State–Washington State contest in Columbus as the weekend’s marquee game), the absence of Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso did not detract from the team’s experience.
“To date, I’ve never been a part of anything like this, so I am very excited after this win,” said Hilliard. “Hopefully we can go out and get another win against Michigan State next week.”
The 2002 Notre Dame versus Michigan game remains a memorable chapter in college football lore, exemplifying the drama and unpredictability that define the sport. Notre Dame’s narrow 25-23 victory was a testament to resilience and determination, as they managed to overcome a series of blunders and turnovers. Shane Walton’s crucial defensive play during Michigan’s two-point conversion attempt epitomized the grit and awareness that secured the win for the Irish. This game also underscored the importance of strategic coaching decisions, as illustrated by Lloyd Carr’s choice to decline a holding penalty that led to a pivotal field goal. The game’s conclusion, marked by Walton’s interception, fittingly mirrored the turnover-laden contest and sealed a hard-fought victory.
Players like Ryan Grant and Carlyle Holiday left an indelible mark with their performances, contributing to a landmark win for the program. The excitement of the game reverberated beyond the field, energizing the Notre Dame community and setting high expectations for the rest of the season. Reflecting on this iconic matchup, it’s clear that the 2002 Notre Dame-Michigan game was more than just a contest; it was a defining moment that encapsulated the spirit and tradition of college football. This throwback serves as a reminder of the thrilling highs and nerve-wracking lows that make the sport so beloved.
Cheers & GO IRISH!
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather for a mock trial against the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents on the university’s campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 21, 2025. Photo by Jeff Kowalsky / AFP / Getty Images
At the University of Michigan’s recent commencement ceremony, history professor Derek Peterson delivered a five-minute speech in which he celebrated all those who have fought for justice at the university, my alma mater. Invoking our legendary sports-focused fight song, he asked the crowd to “sing” for suffragist Sarah Burger, who battled to get women admitted as students; for Moritz Levi, Michigan’s first Jewish professor; for all the students who fought for racial justice at Michigan as part of the Black Action Movement; and for the “pro-Palestinian student activists, who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
Peterson’s address was a historian’s invitation to every student and parent in the Ann Arbor stadium to recognize that the fight for Palestinian rights shares roots with our greatest movements for justice, including the struggle against antisemitism.
The backlash, predictably, was swift. The university’s president apologized; the speech was condemned by pro-Israel Jewish organizations and outlets; and I know it upset many college parents, my Gen X peers — we who were raised to believe with all our hearts that Jewish identity and Zionist identity are inextricable.
But to me, Peterson’s speech was a reminder of one of the most important lessons I took away from my time at the University of Michigan: that questioning Zionism is a necessary part of any Jewish life that aims to center justice.
I graduated from Michigan in 1989, and spent much of my last year in Ann Arbor ensconced at Hillel, where I edited a magazine for Jewish students. I’d grown up going to Young Judaea summer camps and had spent a college semester in Israel, where I’d witnessed the beginning of the first Intifada. I returned to find a shanty in the middle of campus that had been erected, a student organizer told our magazine, “to bring the uprising to the community. It is to show the conditions of the Palestinians and the brutal oppression of the Israeli army.”
The shanty evoked those then prevalent on campuses everywhere to symbolize the struggle of Black South Africans against settler colonialism and apartheid. The new shanty on our campus asserted that these words also applied to Israel.
While I was strongly against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — where Israel would not remove any settlements until 2005 — I was distressed and confused by the shanty’s silent, everpresent message about Israel’s past and present. Is Israel an apartheid state, I wondered?
So I put that question on the cover of our magazine.
The Hillel director called me into his office and somberly expressed his concern. But Hillel International had not yet officially clamped down on student activities that question Israel and Zionism.
So our cover story ran and we dropped our magazine in bundles across campus. At the time, I thought of myself as a liberal Zionist, and I secretly rooted for the student who tried to disprove the devastating charge. But as young journalists, my fellow magazine staffers and I were committed to exploring the views of those who erected the shanty, no matter their hostility to Zionism. We didn’t code the hostility as danger. No one thought we should report our ideological opponents — the kids who fell asleep on their books in the library just like we did — to the dean or to the government for arrest or deportation.
Over my time as an undergraduate, I’d come to recognize in these kaffiyeh-clad Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students the same history-minded, righteous hope that animated me.
Decades later, in the spring of 2024, we all watched as pro-Palestinian student activists — including many Jewish students — set up campus encampments around the country to protest Israel’s assault on Gaza. At Michigan, the encampment was set up on the Diag, the university’s public square, where on the day of my own graduation I’d protested the university’s military research. As the mother of a recent college grad, I was humbled by the determination of these kids, who put up tents, organized teach-ins, and then suffered as police turned off their bodycams and used pepper spray against them. They were lawfully protesting for the university to divest from Israel as it bombed the people of Gaza, the children of Gaza — which is now home to the largest number of child amputees in modern history.
What I understand, and Professor Peterson understands, is that the student activists that he lauded at the commencement are fighting not against Jewish life but for Palestinians’ right to survive daily, as people, and as a people. These activists have asked us to understand, finally, that Zionism is what it does.
“It has been hard work to examine my own mind,” Tzvia Thier, a Jewish Israeli mother, wrote in an essay in the 2021 collection A Land With A People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism. As a child, Thier immigrated to Israel from Romania in the wake of the Holocaust. In 2009, Thier accompanied her daughter to “protect” her while she joined an action to fight the evictions of Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Thier was 65, and realized that it was the first time in her life that she had had conversations with Palestinians. She understood then that “it was not my daughter who needed to be protected, but the Palestinians.”
“Many questions leave me wondering how I could have not thought about them before,” she wrote. “My solid identity was shaken and then broken. I have been an eyewitness to the systematic oppression, humiliation, racism, cruelty, and hatred by ‘my’ people toward the ‘others.’ And what you finally see, you can no longer unsee.”
When that shanty went up on Michigan’s campus in the late ’80s, I began to question all that I’d learned about Israel’s founding. I began to question the very idea of an ethnostate — in the name of any people, anywhere — that enshrines the supremacy of one group of people over another.
By the time I became a mother, I’d become anti-Zionist. I understood — with a grief that does not abate — that, as Jews, our history of oppression has become an alibi for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
We must reject the bad faith accusations of antisemitism that have emptied the word of meaning and enabled authoritarian repression. When students on campuses today charge Israel with apartheid and genocide, they are echoing reports from B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization. I ask the parents of my generation to read these reports and do as Thier did — to allow themselves to see what we have not wanted to see.
I stand with the more than 2,000 University of Michigan faculty, staff, students and alumni who have condemned the university’s response to the commencement address heard round the world.
For the sake of all of our children, I ask that we each do all we can to open our community’s heart to Palestinian history and humanity. That we each join the urgent struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people.
This is the way that our Jewish college kids will find the deep and true safety of community: by leaving hatred, fear, and isolation behind; by honoring Jewish history by standing in solidarity with all who are oppressed; and by roaring in a stadium for freedom and justice, along with their entire generation.
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Thumb Coast Electric has been named a 2026 Michigan 50 Companies to Watch Award recipient, according to a community announcement recognizing high‑growth, second‑stage businesses across the state.
The Port Huron‑based electrical contractor was honored April 22 during the 22nd annual Michigan Celebrates Small Business Gala, where company representatives were recognized onstage alongside other awardees before an audience of more than 800 business owners and supporters.
The award is presented by Michigan Celebrates Small Business, which annually recognizes companies that demonstrate strong growth potential, sustainable competitive advantages and a commitment to their communities. Thumb Coast Electric is listed among the 2026 honorees in the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch category.
Recognizing second‑stage growth
The Michigan 50 Companies to Watch Award honors second‑stage companies — defined as businesses with six to 99 full‑time‑equivalent employees and annual revenue or working capital between $750,000 and $50 million — that are privately held and headquartered in Michigan.
“These companies represent the future of Michigan’s economy,” said Brian Calley, president and CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan, which partners in the awards program. He said the designation recognizes businesses that combine consistent growth with strong workplace culture and community impact.
Judges from economic and entrepreneurship development organizations across the state select winners based on employee or sales growth, sustainable competitive advantage and other indicators of long‑term success. Award finalists also undergo a due‑diligence review before final selections are made.
Community and company culture
Thumb Coast Electric representative Erica Chisholm said the recognition reflects both employee dedication and community support.
“Receiving the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award is a huge honor because it reflects the hard work our team puts in every day and the support we’ve had from our community,” Chisholm said, according to the announcement. She said the company has focused on sustainable growth, investing in its workforce and maintaining quality standards as it expands.
Michigan Celebrates Small Business launched the 50 Companies to Watch program in 2004 and has honored more than 1,200 businesses statewide over the past two decades.
This story was created by Dave DeMille, ddemille@gannett.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at cm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.
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