http://www.freep.com/article/20130516/SPORTS06/305160132/michigan-wolverines-brady-hoke...

Even three days later, Brady Hoke is standing strong.

After his Monday comments about Notre Dame “chickening out” of the teams’ future series after 2015, Hoke backed up his point today on the “Mike and Mike In the Morning” show on ESPN Radio.

He can joke about the firestorm also.

“I almost didn’t call,” he said. “I didn’t think it was good for me to (not) call — I didn’t want to chicken out.”

His point remains vibrant, that the end is just baffling to him.

“Maybe there’s a different word you could use,” he said. “But being a guy from the Midwest and watching the rivalry and obviously being a part of it as a coach, we had 115,000 people at Michigan Stadium two years ago at night and Mike (Golic), you were there. That excitement, that landscape of that game on a national level, it’s going to be too bad when that series ends.”

Mike Golic is a former football player at Notre Dame and took the Irish side that with school’s connection to the ACC football by adding five games, something had to change.

On Monday in Grand Rapids, Hoke wondered aloud why Michigan State and Purdue remained on the Notre Dame slate moving forward and not the Wolverines, implying it was because U-M was a better opponent the Irish didn’t want to face.

He backed off that today, saying “I’m not discounting anybody (else), believe me, I’ve got enough to worry about, we’ve got enough to worry about with our own team. But this rivalry, I think the first game was played in 1887 and that was 126 years of Notre Dame and the University of Michigan playing each other. The respect I have for Notre Dame is what makes the rivalry so good.”

There was a scheduled hiatus in 2018-19 in the series but now it’s essentially over following 2015 after Notre Dame gave the required two-game notice before last year’s kickoff with no resumption in sight.

“College football’s changing, for the better I don’t know,” he said. “We’re going to nine games in our league we have 14 teams now. This thing is going to continue to change probably. How much I don’t know. I just thought that was one of the great things about playing at Michigan, and coaching at Michigan, the three rivalry games that we play. When you look at it form a national standpoint with Notre Dame and in-state with Michigan State and obviously the Ohio game at the end of the year as big as anything.”

Golic continued to defend Notre Dame’s position, saying they can’t give up a West Coast trip (Stanford and USC in alternating years), have played Purdue “75-80” times and that they have a long-standing agreement to play Navy.

Hoke conceded his respect for the Navy series and the service the kids give to their country.

But even losing Notre Dame, Hoke explained U-M still wants to challenge itself in the non-conference.

“The one thing Dave Brandon and I — Dave’s a tremendous athletic director — is we’ve got a home and home with Virginia tech, we’ve got a home and home with Arkansas, we’re playing Utah home and home,” he said. “We’re trying to make a schedule where if they’re going to take in the strength of schedule with who’s playing in the championship games, we want to have a schedule that reflects that.”

Hoke closed by emphasizing it was not a lack of respect for the Irish, just disappointment that spurred his Monday comment.

“We have great respect for Notre Dame I can tell you that,” he said. “We’re just sad to see that series go away.”