Notre Dame and Michigan State Have Gone Opposite Directions Since They Last Met

The last time Michigan State played in Notre Dame Stadium, the Spartans left with a 36-28 win in a season both programs would rather forget. Notre Dame finished 2016 at 4-8. Michigan State finished 3-9. Ten years later, the Spartans return to South Bend on Saturday night, and the two former historic rivals could not have gone any in any different of directions since that night.

The Spartans will enter Notre Dame Stadium as roughly 30-point underdogs against the third ranked Fighting Irish. The gap between the two programs didn’t open overnight. It came from very different decisions about who should lead them.

Since 2017, Notre Dame Has Kept Building

Both teams recovered in a hurry. Notre Dame went to East Lansing a year later on Sept. 23, 2017, won 38-18, and took the Megaphone home. Both programs finished that season 10-3. The Irish ending their season with a Camping World Bowl win over Iowa State while Michigan State took down Washington State in the Holiday Bowl.

Then the series went dark. Notre Dame’s scheduling agreement with the ACC squeezed out room for the Spartans, and a matchup that had been played nearly every year since the late 1940s disappeared for almost a decade.

Brian Kelly beat Michigan State three times in five tries during his time at Notre Dame and then left for LSU after the 2021 regular season. Notre Dame promoted his first-year defensive coordinator, Marcus Freeman, and the results have steadily improved.

Freeman went 9-4 with a Gator Bowl win in 2022, then 10-3 with a Sun Bowl win in 2023. The 2024 team set a school record with 14 wins, beat Indiana, Georgia, and Penn State in the Playoff, and lost 34-23 to Ohio State in the national championship game.

Last season began with two losses to Miami and Texas A&M by a combined four points. Notre Dame then won 10 straight, got left out of the Playoff anyway, and turned down a bowl. Freeman drew NFL interest over the winter and stayed, signing a restructured deal that runs through 2031.

The Irish opened 2026 at 2-0 and have outscored their first two opponents 95-13. For the first time in Freeman’s tenure, they have a returning starting quarterback in CJ Carr. Freeman is 45-12 as Notre Dame’s head coach. Notre Dame enters Saturday with its most talented and deep roster in years as well. Freeman has taken Notre Dame recruiting to heights that haven’t been seen since the days of Lou Holtz and has made Notre Dame cool again.

Michigan State Has Kept Starting Over

Mark Dantonio, the winningest coach in Michigan State history, retired in February 2020 after back-to-back 7-6 seasons. The school hired Mel Tucker, who had spent one season at Colorado and gone 5-7.

Tucker’s second year looked like a home run. The Spartans went 11-2 in 2021, and Michigan State rewarded him with a 10-year, $95 million contract. He was fired early in the 2023 season amid a scandal that brought a lot of shame on the program.

Jonathan Smith came over from Oregon State next and lasted two years. His five wins in 2024 were later vacated because of recruiting violations committed under Tucker. His 2025 team won all three nonconference games, then lost eight straight Big Ten games before beating Maryland in the finale. Michigan State fired him the next day as their bowless streak reached four seasons.

Less than two hours after firing Smith, Michigan State moved to hire Pat Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald went 110-101 in 17 seasons at Northwestern, which fired him in 2023 following a hazing scandal in the program. He denied wrongdoing and settled his wrongful-termination lawsuit against the school in August 2025. He hadn’t coached a game since 2022.

Pat Fitzgerald’s Rebuild Gets a South Bend Test

Fitzgerald’s debut was not smooth. Toledo took a 20-19 lead in the fourth quarter before Alessio Milivojevic hit Rodney Bullard for a go-ahead touchdown on fourth down, and Michigan State won 30-20. It was Fitzgerald’s first win since August 2022.

A week later, the Spartans pulled away from Eastern Michigan in the second half for a 35-7 win. UConn transfer Cam Edwards ran for 152 yards and two touchdowns.

Fitzgerald knows this stadium. As a Northwestern linebacker, he made 11 tackles in the Wildcats’ 1995 win in South Bend. As a head coach, he went 1-1 against the Irish.

Saturday is the 80th meeting in a series Notre Dame leads 49-29-1. The Megaphone has been in South Bend since 2017, and Fitzgerald gets his first shot at it with a roster two games into its latest rebuild.

Michigan State is hoping Fitzgerald can find the kind of consistent success for the Spartans that Freeman has had at Notre Dame. Their run of failed coaches since Dantonio is not that different from Notre Dame’s stretch of Davie, Willingham, and Weis before Kelly finally stabilized the program. Fitzgerald has his work cut out for him in much the same way Kelly did. Michigan State’s roster holes have been filled by an army of transfers because the Spartans haven’t been able to recruit at the level Dantonio did during a run that produced six 10-win seasons.

When this game was scheduled, it looked like one of the marquee games on the 2026 schedule. That obviously isn’t the case now with Notre Dame a nearly 30-point favorite. It won’t diminish the history of the rivalry, but it does take something away from this particular game. Fitzgerald is a proven coach, but expecting a massive turnaround in year one isn’t realistic. By the time Notre Dame travels to East Lansing next September, however, the Spartans should be in a better position than they are today.