Notre Dame, Indiana Renew ‘Rivalry’ in State with College Football Playoff on the line

At the start of the 1991 season, NBC introduced college football fans to something else.

The network acquired the rights to exclusively broadcast Notre Dame Fighting Irish home games and put together a fluid opening montage that highlighted the program’s storied history interspersed with a cameraman descending the stairs from the locker room to the field. Clips of speeches from legendary coach Knute Rockne were sandwiched around notable highlights and images of the famous “Play Like a Champion” sign, forever a part of program history. The fight song played in the background to give it a familiar melody, tying it all together on a broadcast that was undoubtedly focused on the program in South Bend first and everyone else a distant second.

Finally, when the cameraman reached field level, broadcaster Dick Enberg began voicing a preview of the Irish that year under Lou Holtz. After covering all the necessary ground for the home team, the visitors from Bloomington, Ind., were eventually brought up on a note that the intrastate rivalry with the Indiana Hoosiers was renewed for the first time in 33 years.

The thing about a rivalry, though, is that more than geography has to be a factor — the two teams actually have to play to get the juices flowing. The Irish and Hoosiers, separated by 199 miles from stadium gate to stadium gate, have not met since the historic opener.

Until this week, that is, when just the 30th meeting between the programs will take place amid College Football Playoff fanfare in the very first game played on campus as part of the inaugural 12-team bracket. It will likely be brought up again — coincidentally in the first non-NBC telecast of a Notre Dame home game since 1990 — that another three-decade gap has passed since the two have fallen out.

If you’re expecting tensions to flare on Friday night, you’re likely to be disappointed.

When Indiana coach Curt Cignetti strolled to midfield at Assembly Hall after first taking the job last year, he specifically noted what he thought of the Hoosiers’ primary in-state rival, the Purdue Boilermakers: They sucked. The Big Ten’s two name brands in the Michigan Wolverines and Ohio State Buckeyes, who at the time had won the last seven conference titles in football, were mentioned next in saying he wouldn’t take a backseat to anyone.

Not said? A certain national power 3½ hours north that was generally left out of sight and out of mind except for those fans who cross over for Irish football as much as they do Hoosiers hoops.

Whether Cignetti was informed by headmasters of the rivalry dynamic when he got the gig or, well, did his own googling of the matter is not known. But it adds an element for outsiders to see through the CFP matchup with massive implications on each side far beyond state borders.

“I think for me and our guys, in my mind it’s just another game. You prepare for this one like you prepare for all of them. I think for our players, they’ll be excited to play and anxious to prove something,” Cignetti said. “At the end of the day, it’s just football. The game will be won or lost between the white lines. I want them to go out there, fly around, have a little swag and play like we can play.”

It may be just football for the 160 players on the sidelines in frigid conditions at Notre Dame Stadium, but the historic meeting will not lack intrigue or hype.

Touchdown Jesus will be enlightened. The leprechaun wants to dance. Green and gold will be mixed with lots of red and white candy stripes.

It is Hoosiers vs. Rudy— not in a debate over which sports classic was the best movie, but for the right to ring in the new year at the Sugar Bowl against the Georgia Bulldogs and move one step closer to winning a national championship.

“They’re motivated by this opportunity more than anything else,” Irish coach Marcus Freeman said. “They’re motivated to play in the first ever playoff game at Notre Dame Stadium against a heck of a football team (from) Bloomington, Ind., and that’s where the motivation lies more than anything else.”

The casual viewer probably won’t blink at Notre Dame hosting such an occasion, given the history surrounding South Bend — 11 claimed national titles and seven Heisman Trophy winners. The Irish also have the duality of being one of the country’s most followed teams and arguably the most hated.

Still, it’s been anything but smooth sailing this season for Notre Dame, which jumped into prime CFP contention after an eye-opening win over the Texas A&M Aggies before being stunned in Week 2 by the Northern Illinois Huskies.

In retrospect, this result is the most puzzling of the season, as the Huskies lost their next two and were never really in contention for the MAC title.

“I’d be lying if I said I don’t think about that (NIU) loss or being upset. Fear is a motivator,” said Freeman, who signed a major contract extension this week. “A lot of people are motivated by fear or greed and sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s the result of not preparing the right way But sometimes it takes the performance we had against NIU to go back and say, ‘Hold on. What lessons shall we learn?’ “

Apparently a lot, as Notre Dame navigated the knife edge of having the worst possible loss in the eyes of the selection committee.

The Irish destroyed Purdue, 66-7, to remove some of the frustrations and slowly built momentum from there. There was a 49-7 blowout of the rival Stanford Cardinal and a 51-14 shellacking of the Navy Midshipmen, who were ranked in the top 25 at the time. It started a five-game stretch to end the season in which Notre Dame scored at least 35 points every game and the defense rose to third in the nation in points per game. fight allowed.

Outside of the Oregon Ducks, perhaps no one in the College Football Playoff enters the tournament with more momentum than the Irish.

“Our goal every day is to get a little bit better at what we do that day. I think we’ve continued to do that throughout the season,” offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock said. “That trend continues with this group because of the work they put in and because of the attention to detail they have.”

If that has allowed Notre Dame to get to where it needs to be at this point in the season, the same goes for the Hoosiers.

IN Cleveland.com’s annual preseason Big Ten football pollThe Hoosiers were picked at number 17. If you could even find a sportsbook to offer you national title odds on the team, you were looking in the +100,000 range.

Cignetti is a veteran coach who knows how to build a program regardless of resource level. He was on Nick Saban’s staff in the early days of the Alabama Crimson Tide dynasty. He successfully turned around teams like the Division II Indiana University (of Pennsylvania) Crimson Hawks and FCS Elon Phoenix, plus transformed the James Madison Dukes into the FBS ranks as a budding Sun Belt power.

Reversing the Hoosiers’ fortunes was even easier because of the transfer portal and immediate eligibility that allowed 13 former Dukes from JMU’s 2023 team, which went 11-2, to join the migration to the Midwest.

“I’ve known these guys for a long time. I was thinking about it the other day. I’ve known (defensive lineman) James Carpenter since 2019 and I thought it would be weird to be on a defense that doesn’t have James Carpenter in itself,” defensive coordinator Bryant Haines said. “They’ve been great. They changed the culture. They’re a big part of what you’re seeing now in terms of the change in IU football is from the guys we brought in from JMU, no doubt.

Everything that has followed since has been the best season in school history, with records for total wins and most offensive touchdowns in a single season and the most unexpected berths in the playoffs.

“Obviously, it’s an 11-1 football team. Very talented, but you can tell they’re coached,” Freeman said. “They play, as I often say, with the clarity that you’re looking for. When you watch film, it’s a team that plays fast. A team that understands what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, how they’re doing it.

“We understand that it will be a big challenge for us.”

For such an off-the-radar story, it’s fitting that the next step will come against a Notre Dame team that has largely been off Indiana’s radar. The two schools have a home-and-home set for 2030 and ’31, but few expected the pair to renew their in-state rivalry before then — much less with the stakes of the playoffs backing it all up.

There may not be much of a rivalry between the two beyond arguing within the family at the moment, but things are sure to change after Friday night. Bragging rights are at stake in the state of Indiana, and neither side is backing down from the challenge.