SOUTH BEND, Ind. — If destiny doesn’t force Notre Dame and Indiana to clash on the football field over the next few years — as is Friday night, rest assured there won’t be another 33-year gap between games in this very intermittent series.
There’s a signed deal for a home-and-home upcoming, with the first of those games coming in the last year of third-year Irish coach Marcus Freeman’s recently extended contract — 2030, and in Notre Dame Stadium.
The same place 7 seed Notre Dame (11-1) and the 10th-seeded Hoosiers (11-1) walk into history together in the Friday standalone game among four unprecedented College Football Playoff on-campus home games this weekend. TV start time in South Bend is 8 EST on ABC/ESPN, with the actual kickoff set for 8:10.
Six seed Penn State hosts 11 seed SMU, 5 seed Texas hosts 12 seed Clemson, and 8 seed Ohio State takes on 9 seed Tennessee in Saturday’s lineup, with the four first-round winners advancing to quarterfinal matchups Dec. 31/Jan. 1.
The WSBT Gameday SportsBeat pregame radio show for the ND-IU game will run from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday (wsbtradio.com/96.1 FM), with Inside ND Sports' Eric Hansen part of that broadcast team.
Inside ND Sports has you covered after the game on our YouTube channel with two postgame shows. First up and live, roughly 90 minutes after the game's final whistle, it's former Irish offensive lineman Bob Morton and Hansen breaking down the game and taking questions from viewers on Into The eNDzone.
Later, our Postgame Takeaways Show with Tyler James and Hansen, drops late Friday night for your Saturday morning viewing.
When the Irish and IU play their presumed 31st game in the series six seasons for now, Notre Dame starting quarterback Riley Leonard will be a memory.
How he will be remembered hinges on how the first football meeting since Rick Mirer and Trent Green dueled in 1991 between the two in-state co-existors and the length of Notre Dame’s College Football Playoff run.
In their two previous versions, 2018 and 2020 in the old four-team format, the Irish were one-and-done and decisively both times.
This Notre Dame team looked like it might not even get to this stage after losing to four-touchdown underdog Northern Illinois at home, 16-14, on Sept. 7. After which Leonard and the Irish ranked 129th out of 133 FBS teams in team pass efficiency. And during which the Duke transfer QB was booed.
“A couple things there,” Leonard said earlier this week. “You don’t really understand the magnitude of this place until you lose. I say that all the time. That’s when I really felt like, ‘Oh dang, there’s a lot more magnitude that I hold and weight that I hold when I play the game than I expected.
“Those boos and stuff early, definitely didn’t like them. I also remind myself, that’s like 10% of the crowd, but when 10% of the crowd is booing, it’s enough for me to hear it and get kind of pissed off. I guess it kind of motivated me and kicked me into gear.”
How much did Leonard get into gear, by Selection Sunday, Dec. 8, Notre Dame had risen 91 spots in the team pass efficiency rankings to 38th. And individually, if he could take the first four games as a mass Mulligan — Texas A&M, two MAC teams and the Big Ten’s 18th-place team, Purdue — Leonard would have finished 14th nationally in passing efficiency.
And while his passing prowess will be both tested and relevant to whether the Irish can extend the nation’s second-longest active win streak to 11 games, his running acumen may be the most overlooked aspect in the matchup.
Indiana comes to town with the nation’s No. 1 ranked rush defense. But the Hoosiers faced only two rushing offenses ranked in the top 90 and none in the top 50. And of the 12 starting QBs IU took on, not one of them averaged as much as 2.5 yards a carry or 22 yards a game rushing.
Leonard, part of the nation's 10th-most-prolific rushing attack, averages 5.8 yards per carry and 60.1 yards a game with a school-record tying among QBs 14 rushing TD.
And more than that, a man that was reborn in the lowest moment of his career — the loss to NIU (7-5), which incidentally plays Monday in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl against Fresno State.
“My phone is still shut off, so I could be the best quarterback or still hated,” he said. “I don’t even know. I think this offense as a whole, obviously, it starts with me, the quarterback, the captain.
“If I can respond from adversity like that, it gives them confidence like, ‘Oh snap, if he can respond from that, he can respond from anything.’ Anytime something goes bad in a game, I take a lot of pride in bouncing back, because I’ve kind of done that this year.”
There are scads of other players to watch in a game that will provide 2 seed and bye-receiving Georgia (11-2) its Jan. 1 playoff opponent. It’s our practice at Inside ND Sports to pick four, two for each team.
Besides Leonard, here are the others:
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Indiana defensive end Mikail Kamara
One of 30 players who transferred in this offseason when Curt Cignetti got the job, and one of 13 who followed him from James Madison, Kamara was a 0-star recruit coming out of high school, who blossomed into a first-team All-Big Ten selection in 2024
The 6-1, 265-pound redshirt junior from Ashburn, Va., registered 44 tackles, including 15 for loss with 10 sacks during the regular season. He also forced two fumbles and recovered three.
Indiana, at 20th nationally in sacks per game as a team (2.83) is tied for the highest-ranked team in that statistical category Notre Dame has faced this year — tied with … Northern Illinois, which recorded two for 22 yards in losses.
Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke
One of the 17 players that came to IU this offseason via the transfer portal who did not come from James Madison, Rourke was a multi-year starter at Ohio University, and kind of a dual threat during that time, rushing for more than 200 each season from 2021-23 and averaging 3.3 yards per carry or more.
This season the 6-foot-5, 223-pound former two-star prospect from Binbrook, Ontario, Canada, has netted minus-25 rushing yards. But his pass efficiency rating has improved from a nation’s 64th-best 132.5 rating with Ohio in 2023 to a nation’s best this season (181.4).
Friday night, he’ll get to mix it up with the nation’s No. 1 pass-efficiency defense. The previous best was Ohio State’s nation’s fourth-best unit, and Rourke was held to a season-low 68 passing yards on 8-of-18 accuracy in IU’s lone loss this season.
Notre Dame nose guard Howard Cross III
The 2023 All-American spent the first part of the season playing through a chronic hamstring injury and missed the last part — 3 ½ games worth in November — with a high ankle sprain. In between, he was a dominating force against the run and a big part of ND’s pass rush, both getting sacks himself and creating opportunities on the edge with his consistent pressure up the middle.
And now he’s back, supposedly all the way back.
To the point, in fact, a question about how much he would be used initially confused Irish defensive coordinator Al Golden.
Q: With Howard Cross III returning, can he be full go after being out so long? Or do you have to work him in?
“When you say work in …”
Q: He’s a heavy-rep guy normally. Can he be a heavy-rep guy?
“Yeah. I’m not anticipating ‘working him in’ on Friday. I don’t need him standing next to me.”
A big part of Ohio State holding IU QB Kurtis Rourke down was pressuring him relentlessly. Notre Dame would like to cut and paste a page out of that playbook, with Cross’ help.
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