If you play in it, they will come. The basketball State of Indiana is experiencing a college football euphoria, as it prepares to host an on-campus college football playoff game on Friday for the first time in history.
A line of headlights as far as the eye can see will make their way along the highways and bi-ways of the Hoosier state to college football’s Valhalla, South Bend, home of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Resident Hoosiers will take their seats under the watchful eye of Touchdown Jesus as their favorite sons of the University of Indiana and Notre Dame take the field in battle.
The Indiana Hoosiers, a No. 10 seed in the college football playoff rankings under first-year head coach Curt Cignetti (the 2024 Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year), took the Big Ten by storm this season by winning 10 straight games before losing to Ohio State.
Notre Dame, the No. 7 seed, suffered an early season loss to unranked Northern Illinois, then reeled off 10 straight wins to improve 11-1. Great enough for Marcus Freeman to earn a contract extension.
Notre Dame Stadium is iconic and intimidating, and the ghosts and legends of the Golden Domers are abundant: The Four Horsemen, Knute Rockne, Ara Parseghian, Rudy, Lou Holtz, etc. But the football field is 100 yards long, the same dimensions as the gridiron in Bloomington. So, the Fighting Irish will try and intimidate the Hoosiers in other ways.
Both teams have dominant defenses, as both are ranked in the top ten.
What does that mean for Indiana? Scoring 43 points per game, the Hoosiers will have to execute explosive touchdown-scoring plays sooner rather than later and force Notre Dame to play from behind. The Fighting Irish have struggled at times in the redzone, ranked No. 74 in redzone conversions.
If not, Notre Dame will do everything they can to force the Hoosiers to turn the ball over. The Fighting Irish are one of the best in the FBS at +16 in turnover margin.
The weather could be construed as a 12th man. The forecast for South Bend on Friday? High temperature of 33 degrees and snow, and as the sun goes down the temp will drop down in the low 20s. Man, you got to love football the Midwest in December.
Not having to leave the borders of Indiana to play a first-round playoff game, it does not get any better than that. But no matter what happens on the field, the State of Indiana comes out as the real winner.