Flashback Friday: When top-25 opponents squared off for the first time

Week 4 features a trio of matchups between AP Top 25 teams. Let’s flash back to the first time these highly ranked teams faced one another on the field.

Over the first few weeks of the 2019 college football season, it feels like there has been a relative dearth of matchups pitting teams ranked in the AP Top 25 against one another. This week, however, football fans are treated to three different games where Top 25 position will be on the line.

In the early slate, No. 11 Michigan heads to Madison to face No. 13 Wisconsin at Camp Randall Stadium. The afternoon games are headlined by No. 8 Auburn’s trip to College Station to battle No. 16 Texas A&M at Kyle Field. And in the top prime-time showdown of the week, No. 3 Georgia hosts No. 7 Notre Dame between the hedges.

One is a longtime battle between conference foes. Another is a more recent conference duel created from the processes of realignment. And the last of the bunch is a matchup short on past editions but long on history.

For this week’s Flashback Friday, let’s dig deep into the annals of college football history for a look back at the first time Saturday’s three marquee matchups took place on the football field.

1892: The first meeting between the Wolverines and Badgers

Three years before the formation of the Big Ten Conference, Wisconsin and Michigan shed their independence to link up in the short-lived Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the Northwest. Banding together with Minnesota and Northwestern, the four-team league was set up to facilitate scheduling between the schools in football, baseball, and track and field.

It was the formation of the IAAN that led to the first meeting between Wisconsin and Michigan. The Badgers were led by first-year Frank Crawford, a former Yale student who had moved to the Midwest to take over as Michigan’s first head coach the year before. After defecting to Madison after one season in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines were led on the road by another former Yale man.

Frank Barbour, a key player on the 1891 Bulldogs team that went 13-0, was in the first of his two years as Michigan’s head coach after his graduation from Yale. After two local wins home and away against the Detroit-based Michigan Athletic Association, the Wolverines left their home state for their first-ever conference showdown in school history.

At a time when touchdowns counted for four points and extra points added two points, George Jewett proved the difference for the visitors. The first African-American player ever to suit up for the Wolverines, Jewett was a junior who starred at halfback when he first faced Wisconsin’s defense. Getting great blocking, he ran an end-around in the first half — and then kicked the extra points — to give Michigan a 6-0 lead.

Jewett scored again in the second half, running in the ball but failing to convert the kick after as Michigan went ahead 10-0. The Badgers finally found the scoreboard on a late touchdown, but it was not enough to counter Jewett’s scoring prowess. Wisconsin fell 10-6 at home on Randall Field, on the site where Camp Randall Stadium now stands. From there Michigan continued a barnstorming trip that took them to Minneapolis and Indianapolis to face Minnesota and DePauw before their return home.

On the same patch of land where they met for the first time 127 years ago, Michigan and Wisconsin will square off again for the 68th time on Saturday. The Badgers will hope to reverse their fortunes from that 1892 encounter, while Michigan will try to win for the 52nd time in what has long been a lopsided series.

1911: The first time Auburn and Texas A&M met on the gridiron

Texas A&M and Auburn have only been divisional rivals since the Aggies decided to leave the Big 12 for a spot in the SEC in 2012. Thus the Saturday afternoon meeting at Kyle Field will be just the 10th meeting between these two storied programs.

Their first meeting actually transpired in Dallas back in 1911. At the time the Tigers were a longtime member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, while the Aggies were independent and still four years removed from their first season as a charter member of the Southwest Conference.

Little documentation exists about this football game. Texas A&M prevailed in their home state 16-0 on ostensibly neutral turf in Dallas. About the game, the 1912 Long Horn yearbook had this to say:

“We knew that we were going against one of the strongest colleges in the South, and therefore we prepared long and hard for this game. The fruit of our labors is shown by the score.”

The yearbook said nothing further specifically about the contest, and Auburn’s 1912 Glomerata mentioned nothing about the game beyond the score and location. The two schools went their separate ways for the next 75 years. Their only other meeting before becoming SEC West counterparts came on New Year’s Day 1986 when the Tigers and the Aggies returned to Dallas for the 50th edition of the Cotton Bowl.

Since 2012, Auburn has won all three meetings in College Station by an average margin of 12 points.

1981: When Georgia and Notre Dame dueled for the first time

The SEC champion arrived at the Sugar Bowl at the end of the 1980 season as the No. 1 team in the nation. Yet it was No. 7 Notre Dame that was actually a one-point favorite in New Orleans when the Fighting Irish met the Bulldogs for the first time.

Vince Dooley’s Georgia squad was led on offense by freshman phenom Herschel Walker. The powerful running back closed out the 11-game regular season with 1616 yards and 15 rushing touchdowns, finishing third in the Heisman voting behind South Carolina’s George Rogers and Pitt defensive lineman Hugh Green.

There was uncertainty whether Dooley would even be with the team, as there was speculation that the coach would depart Athens and head to his alma mater to take over the Auburn job. With the national title opportunity on the line, however, Dooley opted to say no to a dream job after building a powerhouse between the hedges.

Notre Dame scored first — Harry Oliver booted a 50-yard field goal for the Irish on the opening drive of the game. The top-ranked Bulldogs blocked Oliver’s second field-goal attempt when longtime reserve Terry Hoage burst through the line on special teams to cement his place in Georgia football history. Momentum had shifted, and Georgia responded with a 46-yard Rex Robinson field goal of their own less than two minutes from the end of the quarter.

On the ensuing kickoff, the ball flew 59 yards before bouncing around laterally near the goal line between return men Jim Stone and Ty Barber. Flying downfield, brothers Steve and Bob Kelly teamed up to recover the ball one yard from paydirt to recover a 59-yard onside kick. Walker finished the drive quickly on a one-yard leap over the line, and Georgia had a lead they would not concede.

Walker finished with 150 yards on 36 carries, capping his freshman season with the heaviest rushing workload to this day in Sugar Bowl history. Amazingly, Walker pulled off the feat with a separated shoulder that he suffered early in the contest. He effectively provided the entirety of the offense, as he finished with 23 more yards than the Georgia offense netted as a team.

Georgia’s defense also came up huge, forcing four turnovers to mitigate giving up 328 total yards of offense. The narrow 17-10 victory gave the Bulldogs their first and only undisputed national championship to date.

Georgia won the first rematch 37 years later in South Bend when the Bulldogs took down the Fighting Irish 20-19 in 2017 in the first game of their home-and-home series.

Come back for Flashback Friday every week as we look back at more great moments from college football history. You can also read more football coverage from Zach at Saturday Blitz.