Indiana will turn in its calling card as the nation’s biggest basketball state and become a college football hot spot the week before Christmas.
The 12-team College Football Playoff bracket released Sunday sends No. 10 seed Indiana (11-1) to No. 7 Notre Dame (11-1) for a first-round game in South Bend on Friday, Dec. 20, with the winner facing No. 2 Georgia (11-2) in the Sugar Bowl in a quarterfinal game on Jan. 1 in New Orleans.
The Indiana and Notre Dame campuses are separated by 200 miles in the Hoosier State, but their football teams haven’t met since 1991 — and before that, 1958. Notre Dame leads the series 22-3.
“Regardless of who we play, this is the playoffs, and you win or go home, and we’re in it to win it,” said Indiana first-year head coach Curt Cignetti, who has already taken the Hoosiers to new heights. “Our odds of making the College Football Playoff at the beginning of the season, I don’t know what they were, but they were pretty darn low, I’m sure. We were picked 17th out of 18 teams in the Big Ten.
“Our odds of winning the next four games are probably significantly higher than they were of making the playoffs in the first place. We’ve climbed that mountain.”
The last time Indiana played Notre Dame, Rick Mirer and Jerome Bettis led the Fighting Irish to a 49-27 win in South Bend on an 86-degree September afternoon 33 years ago. The temperature will be quite a bit cooler when the teams meet at Notre Dame Stadium in less than two weeks.
Georgia received a first-round bye as one of the four highest-ranked conference champions. The Bulldogs beat Texas in overtime on Saturday despite starting quarterback Carson Beck missing the second half with an injury to his right arm. The Bulldogs have won all three meetings with Notre Dame, all of them high-stakes games, and have never faced Indiana.
Though in the same state, the Hoosiers and the Irish have been on opposite ends of the college football world. Notre Dame is among five schools with more than 900 all-time wins. The Hoosiers’ 691 all-time losses trail only Northwestern’s 703. Notre Dame claims 13 national championships; Indiana has played in 13 bowls.
