Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Ohio State-Notre Dame Fiesta Bowl matchup offers plenty of subplots

Published Dec. 10, 2015 3:33 p.m. ET

Marcus Hartman

Pitting Ohio State and Notre Dame against each other in the Fiesta Bowl not only involves two top 10 teams but also programs with numerous connections.

The most well-known probably involves Urban Meyer. The head coach of the Buckeyes was an assistant coach at Notre Dame from 1996-2000 and thought to be a candidate for the head job in South Bend before choosing Florida instead after the 2004 season.

Meyer is not the only former Fighting Irish assistant on staff in Columbus. Offensive line coach and offensive coordinator Ed Warinner spent two years in South Bend before joining Meyer's staff in 2012, while running backs coach Tony Alfrod and tight ends coach Tim Hinton also are former Notre Dame assistants.

Ohio State director of football sports performance Mickey Marotti was the director of strength and conditioning in South Bend from 1998-2005 before joining Meyer in Gainesville.

Joe Burger, a walk-on linebacker for the Buckeyes, is the son of a Notre Dame walk-on football player (Bob Burger), and his brother Bobby followed the same path along with two of his uncles.

Notre Dame has 12 players from Ohio on its roster, including starting quarterback DeShone Kizer (Toledo Central Catholic), who replaced opening-day starter Malik Zaire of Kettering Alter.

The other Ohio natives are Jimmy Byrne (Cleveland St. Ignatius), Daniel Cage (Cincinnati Winton Woods), Nick Coleman (Kettering Alter), Shaun Crawford (Lakewood St. Edward), Chris Finke (Kettering Alter), Jarrett Grace (Cincinnati Colerain), Jacob Matuska (Columbus Bishop Hartley), Ben Stuntman (Kettering Alter) and Elijah Taylor (Cincinnati Moeller).

Notre Dame has always made a habit of recruiting in Ohio, and the Fighting Irish even found their current head coach there as Brian Kelly arrived in South Bend after a successful stint at the University of Cincinnati.

"First of all the high school football is outstanding," Kelly said when asked about his experiences recruiting Ohio for the Bearcats against Ohio State. "You could build your program on kids from the state of Ohio and Ohio State couldn't take them all every year, so we kind of waited for Ohio State to take all their kids and we tried to take the other ones.

"There were still enough kids in the state of Ohio you could build a really good football team with, so I think it just speaks to the level of football in the state and the passion for high school football and the kind of football there is in the Midwest in particular, but just a great area for football and what Urban has built there with his base and taking those kids from the Midwest and I tried to do a lot of the similar things in Cincinnati."

Linebackers coach Mike Elston is from St. Marys, Ohio, coordinator of football operations Jason Michelson is from Lebanon and direct of football administration Beth Rex is from Tiffin.