Notre Dame has played Navy every year since 1927, the year after the Irish began their series with USC. That’s good for the longest running intersectional rivalry, which has not skipped a season, since its inception. It’s also one of the most lopsided rivalries in all of college football. Notre Dame leads it 76-13-1.
That’s along the lines of Oklahoma-Iowa State (76-6-2), Michigan-Indiana (58-9), and Alabama-Kentucky (37-2-1). The closest intersectional rivalry in lopsidedness is LSU-Tulane (69-23-7). That’s a rivalry that hasn’t been played since 2009.
The Notre Dame-Navy game is played out of tradition. It’s played because the US Navy paid enough money to us Notre Dame as a training center that the university survived financial hardships of World War II.