It was a September night at Spartan Stadium in 2010. The sold-out crowd packed the stadium shoulder to shoulder as Michigan State football trotted its kicker out for a 46-yard field goal attempt to tie Notre Dame at 31 and send the game to a second overtime.
The ball was snapped, the play was in motion, but suddenly, the holder rose from a knee, scanning the field to throw. Punter Aaron Bates, a former high school quarterback, shimmied right, planted his lead foot and found tight end Charlie Gantt wide open for a 29-yard touchdown to win the game 34-31.
"Little Giants" was just one unforgettable moment in a series that's produced no shortage of storybook endings. Saturday writes the next chapter as Notre Dame and MSU prepare to renew a nearly 130-year-old rivalry dormant for almost a decade.
"Not to play this game every year, it stinks, I think, for both fanbases and for both teams, because it's one of the great, storied traditions in rivalries in college football, and I'm just honored to be a part of it," MSU head coach Pat Fitzgerald said at Monday's press conference.
Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium. The No. 3 Fighting Irish (2-0) will look to avoid an upset at the hands of the Spartans (2-0) under first-year head coach Pat Fitzgerald. The game will air on NBC and Peacock.
Origins
On Nov. 25, 1897, MSU played its first game against Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, marking the start of a now 129-year-old tradition.
MSU, then Michigan Agricultural College, was only in its second season since gaining varsity status in 1896, and it showed. Notre Dame handled the Aggies 34-6, a sign of things to come, as MSU wouldn't pick up its first win in the series until 1910.
The two teams met 15 times from 1897 to 1921, with Notre Dame winning 13, dominating the rivalry's early decades. The series then went dark for 26 years before resuming in 1948.
Shortly after the rivalry resumed, it got a permanent symbol. In 1949, the two schools' alumni clubs introduced the Megaphone Trophy, a large megaphone split blue on Notre Dame's side and green on MSU's, with the score of every game running down the middle.
MSU’s Dominant Stretch
From 1950-66, the Spartans transformed into a college football powerhouse. Under Hall of Fame head coaches Clarence "Biggie" Munn (1947-53) and Duffy Daugherty (1954-72), MSU went 117-37-4 during that span and won six national championships.
It was a 17-season stretch that not only built the pillars for the program today, but also included rivalry domination. The Spartans boasted a 12-2-1 record against the Fighting Irish over the span, highlighted by an eight-game win streak from 1955-1963, the longest in program history.
The one tie came in 1966, when the two teams met in what would become known as the "Game of the Century."
Notre Dame entered ranked No. 1, MSU No. 2. The November matchup at Spartan Stadium drew 33 million viewers, college football's largest TV audience ever recorded at the time.
It was highly anticipated, not only because the two top-ranked teams were meeting, but also because of the amount of talent across both rosters. The game featured 25 players later named All-Americans and 31 future NFL players. Of those players, 10 were first-round picks, including the future No. 1 overall selection in the 1967 NFL/AFL draft, MSU's Bubba Smith.
The game settled at 10-10, a battle between the eventual national champions, as both teams went on to claim a share of the 1966 national championship.
Notre Dame’s Dominant Stretch
After almost two decades of getting thrown around, Notre Dame returned the favor from 1967-94, a stretch in which the teams met 28 times and the Spartans won just four.
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From 1987-94, the Fighting Irish won eight straight under Hall of Fame head coach Lou Holtz, matching MSU's longest win streak in the series. It was also Notre Dame's longest streak since they won the initial eight meetings between 1897 and 1909.
Similar to the Spartans, Notre Dame's dominant stretch of the rivalry also included three national championships in 1973, 1977 and 1988, as the program went 236-80-7 overall across 28 seasons.
The Chaos Era
Following a two-year break, the rivalry returned in 1997 with an MSU 23-7 road win, a victory that marked the start of a five-game winning streak. That kind of consistency became rare between 2002 and 2011, as the trophy switched hands every year except 2008. From 2000-06, every game was decided by seven points or fewer.
In 2005, MSU traveled to South Bend and beat No. 10 Notre Dame 44-41 in double overtime. In 2006, the Fighting Irish responded with a 40-37 win in East Lansing after being down 31-14 at halftime as the No. 12 team in the country. They scored 19 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to avoid a second straight upset at the hands of the Spartans.
In 2010, MSU took down Notre Dame 34-31 in overtime at Spartan Stadium on a walk-off fake field goal. The moment, referred to as "Little Giants," named after the 1994 youth football movie, saw the Spartans appear to be settling for three to send the game to double overtime. But Bates, the holder, threw the ball instead for a touchdown, a defining moment in Hall of Fame head coach Mark Dantonio's career.
In 2013, No. 22 Notre Dame took down MSU 17-13, the Spartans' lone loss in a 13-1 season that included a Big Ten Championship win over No. 2 Ohio State, a Rose Bowl victory and a No. 3 final AP ranking. A loss enshrined in history as a "what if" in regard to whether MSU would have earned a spot in the national championship.
The Last Megaphone and The Return
The last time MSU had its hands on the Megaphone was in 2016, after a 36-28 road win in a Top 25 matchup with Notre Dame at No. 18 and the Spartans at No. 12. Meanwhile, the Fighting Irish have held onto the trophy since 2017 after their 38-18 win in East Lansing.
This will be the 80th contest between the schools after the longest break since the Megaphone was introduced in 1949. Notre Dame leads the all-time series 47-29-1, a mark that excludes wins in 2012 and 2013, later vacated by NCAA sanctions.
"Coach (Marcus) Freeman and his staff do an outstanding job," Fitzgerald said. "His team is just complete; there's not one place you look on the tape that you see anything as far as an issue that they have."
