Indiana at Notre Dame in CFP will be teams’ 1st meeting since ’91, winner gets Georgia in Sugar Bowl

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 College Football Playoff bracket released Sunday sends No. 10 seed Indiana to No. 7 Notre Dame for a first-round game on Dec. 20 with the winner facing No. 2 Georgia in the Sugar Bowl in a quarterfinal game on Jan. 1.

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, with Indiana’s wins coming in 1900, 1905 and 1950.

The last time Notre Dame (11-1) and Indiana (11-1) played, Rick Mirer and Jerome Bettis led the 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 (11-2) earned the Southeastern Conference’s automatic bid and first-round bye by beating Texas in overtime on Saturday with quarterback Carson Beck missing the second half with an injury to his right (throwing) arm. The Bulldogs have won all three meetings with Notre Dame, all of them high-stakes games, and have never faced Indiana.

Despite their close proximity, Notre Dame and Indiana have been on opposite ends of the college football world historically. Notre Dame is among five schools with more than 900 all-time wins. The Hoosiers’ 691 all-time losses are second-most to Northwestern’s 703. Notre Dame claims 13 national championships; Indiana has played in 13 bowls.

First-year Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti has led the program to its first 11-win season, an eight-game improvement from 2023. He said his team has had to deal with criticism about its schedule and whether it was playoff-worthy.

“We were the feel-good story of college football for a long time,” Cignetti said Sunday on ESPN. “Then we got rankings and you got teams concerned about their status about being one of the 12 and then you start seeing people taking shots.”

Irish coach Marcus Freeman said he’s a believer.

“Being in college football you can’t help but notice the tremendous job they’ve done at Indiana this year, to go 11-1 in the Big Ten Conference and to win some games against really good opponents,” he said on ESPN. “It speaks to where that program is. We understand the challenge of that.”

Smart said he hadn’t studied Notre Dame or Indiana enough to comment on a potential matchup in the Sugar Bowl. Smart worked with Cignetti when both were on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama from 2007-10, and he said it’s been “really neat, really cool” to see the transformation of the Hoosiers.

“My years at Alabama I was a really young coach and I enjoyed being around him, and his personality is different,” Smart said. “I really like coach Cignetti and followed him; wherever he’s gone he’s done really well.”

Georgia’s first meeting with Notre Dame came in the 1981 Sugar Bowl. Vince Dooley’s 1980 Bulldogs finished a 12-0, national championship season with a 17-10 win. A freshman and future Heisman Trophy winner, Herschel Walker, rushed for 150 yards and two touchdowns with a dislocated shoulder to lead the Bulldogs.

Their other two games were early season contests in 2017 and 2019. Georgia won the first 20-19 at Notre Dame in a Top 25 matchup that set the Bulldogs on the path to a 9-0 start and appearance in the CFP championship game. Georgia won the second 23-17 when both teams were in the top 10.

Georgia will be making its 11th appearance in the Sugar Bowl and first since 2019.

“One of the first games I remember actually seeing and watching back in the early ‘80s as a 5- or 6-year-old kid, Herschel Walker and the moments that happened in the Sugar Bowl all the way through games I’ve been a part of,” Smart said.

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