Catholics vs. Convicts and the Shirts You Didn’t Buy at the Bookstore

Before it was an ESPN documentary, it was a shirt somebody wanted you to buy.

That’s the part of “Catholics vs. Convicts” worth remembering. The phrase got attached to one of the biggest games Notre Dame ever played, but it came out of the same world as the other rivalry shirts: students coming up with something funny, finding a printer, and figuring out how to sell a pile of them before kickoff.

And if you think the bootleg shirt scene is just something people exaggerate when they talk about the old days, the student newspapers tell a pretty good story.

Fourteen designs. One approved.

The front page of The Observer’s October 13–15, 1988 weekend edition reported that at least 14 Notre Dame–Miami shirt designs had been sold on campus. Only one had university approval.

That’s a whole unofficial collection for one game.

A Morrissey Hall resident assistant selling an approved fundraiser shirt complained that underground sellers could go door to door and move hundreds. His group had to follow the permit rules. Elsewhere in the same issue, a Catholics vs. Convicts vendor said an alumni club wanted between 50 and 100 shirts.

So this wasn’t just a few college kids trying to get a laugh from their roommates. Parents, alumni, and people coming in for the weekend wanted in, too.

The shirt that stuck

Later accounts of the 1988 shirt center on Notre Dame students Pat Walsh and Joe Fredrick. Scholastic’s coverage of the ESPN documentary describes Walsh, a Dillon Hall senior, making shirts with clever slogans before the Miami matchup gave him his biggest one.

“Catholics vs. Convicts” was short enough to read walking past somebody. You knew which game it meant. You also knew it was going to annoy the other side. As a rivalry shirt, it did its job a little too well.

The football made sure nobody forgot it. On October 15, 1988, Notre Dame beat top-ranked Miami 31–30. Pat Terrell knocked down the two-point conversion pass with 45 seconds left, and the Irish went on to win the national championship.

You couldn’t ask for a better result if you had a box of those shirts to sell.

The slogan was controversial then, too. Holtz was asking students to show Miami respect before the game. Later coverage has also examined the racial stereotypes behind the slogan. You can remember the game and the shirt while acknowledging why other people saw it differently.

A trailer at Edison and Ivy

By 1990, the story had a very South Bend address.

In its October 19 issue, The Observer profiled finance majors Victor Bierman and Alan Sorce and their “Catholics vs. Convicts III” business. The paper reported more than 14,000 shirts sold in under three months and gross sales above $100,000. That’s sales, not profit, but still a lot of shirts.

They supplied 24 businesses near campus, including gas stations, hotels, bars, and restaurants. On game days, they sold from a trailer at Edison and Ivy. They also ran newspaper ads and a mail-order operation out of a South Bend residence.

Think about finding your game shirt at a gas station on the way to the stadium. Or getting one at the bar. The shirt business was woven right into the weekend.

Ten bucks and a good idea

The scene kept going into the ’90s. An October 7, 1993 Scholastic report described students selling shirts through word of mouth and trips through the residence halls. One seller said a batch of 300 shirts sold at $10 each had produced $1,500 in profit to split with a partner.

Students told the magazine they bought those shirts because the designs and messages were different from what the bookstore carried. The university, meanwhile, was trying to stop unauthorized use of its trademarks and sales that broke campus rules.

There’s your whole push and pull. Somebody had a joke the bookstore wasn’t going to print. Somebody else wanted to wear it Saturday.

That’s what makes these shirts fun to look back on. They tell you what people were talking about that week, who they couldn’t stand, and how badly they wanted the Irish to win. Some were clever. Some were crude. Some probably should have stayed an idea.

But decades later, we’re still talking about them.

Wear the rivalry

If this is your kind of game-day gear, check out our Catholics vs. Convicts shirt and Catholics vs. Convicts embroidered rope snapback hat. Our current designs are a nod to that old rivalry-shirt tradition.

Still have an old rivalry shirt? Send us a picture at theirishecho@gmail.com. Front, back, and whatever you remember about where you bought it. We’d love to see what’s still hiding in South Bend closets.

Sources & further reading

The Observer, October 13–15, 1988 — front-page shirt coverage and Irish Extra.
The Observer, October 19, 1990 — “Shirt brings fame, fortune for seniors.”
Scholastic, October 7, 1993 — reporting on the student shirt trade, printed pages 4–5.
Scholastic, December 8, 2016 — the shirt and the documentary.
Scholastic, February 16, 2026 — a look back at the rivalry and its controversy.
Notre Dame Athletics — the 1988 finish.