The future of college football’s bowl structure remains. But if nothing else, this weekend may show us where postseason games belong.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — There is plenty wrong with college football.
You’ve heard the grievances, the gripes and the grumbles. The transfer portal and NIL. Unfair resource gaps and an unregulated compensation system.
There are many things about which to complain, festering issues that need examining, problems that have to be fixed.
But Friday night was not one of them.
From snow-blanketed Northern Indiana, amid frigid temperatures in a capacity-filled 94-year-old stadium, college football — the entity whose off-the-field engine is sputtering along — delivered spectacular history to millions across the country: an on-campus playoff game.
Glorious. Fantastic. Amazing.
Roaring crowds. Marching bands. College kids.
The Golden Dome. Touchdown Jesus. The Linebacker Lounge.
Let the record show that, in the first-ever game of the 12-team College Football Playoff, seventh-seeded Notre Dame beat 10th-seeded Indiana, 27-17, in front of a frenzied home crowd in the middle of a packed campus.
This is where college football’s postseason belongs. This is where college football lives, where it thrives. It was born in this place, on a sprawling campus as an extracurricular activity (it’s true) for athletic students. And just because the sport’s popularity turned it into a billion-dollar business, just because federal judges and state lawmakers are turning it into a more professional entity, doesn’t mean that college football should lose the greatest gift it provides: college.
It’s in the name, for crying out loud. College football on college campuses in College Football Playoff games. What an innovative thought!
Notre Dame even moved final exams up a day so students could spend their Thursday night and Friday afternoon saucing up before the big bout. They obliged. This writer witnessed many of them, downing $7, 32-ounce Bud Lights at the city’s famous Linebacker Lounge.
This place was abuzz, even if it was frozen.
At 7 a.m. Friday, 13 hours before kickoff, dozens of vehicles formed a line to gain access into campus. By noon, tailgaters popped up tents. They smoked marinated meats and chugged Miller High Lifes. They high-fived, bear-hugged and cuddled for warmth.
Within the school’s basketball arena, athletic director Pete Bevacqua gestured out of his office window as fans paraded through the snow. Perhaps, he half-jokingly suggested, it is not so bad that Notre Dame — in this playoff format — is ineligible as an independent for a first-round bye.
“We’ll take the home game,” he smiled.
This is it. This is what it’s about. This is glorious.
We’ve never seen this before — a true college football postseason clash on a college campus. How many years were wasted? How many seasons now gone? We could have had this so much sooner.
The NFL, their grand stadiums, their big cities, their subways, has nothing on this. Sure, the Irish and Hoosiers churned out a dud on the field — the highlight was running back Jeremiyah Love’s first-quarter, 98-yard touchdown run. But the atmosphere, the wintry weather, the pageantry of it all — that’s where it’s at.
And we get three more on Saturday! First in State College, where the windchill is expected to dip into the low teens for Penn State vs. SMU. And then Austin, where the SEC’s newbie Longhorns meet ACC power Clemson under sunny skies. And then finally in Columbus, where Big Ten and SEC juggernauts tangle amid 20-degree temps for Ohio State vs. Tennessee.
Perhaps they will put on more of a nail-biting show.
The Irish did to Indiana what Ohio State did last month — suffocating the Hoosiers’ high-powered offense with a mixture of coverages and pressures. They rattled quarterback Kurtis Rourke, holding him to fewer than 180 yards passing. They made IU look like a bunch of Group of Five guys who meandered through one of the easiest roads of any playoff team.
Their coach seemed out of his normal element, too. It was a somewhat mystifying game plan from Curt Cignetti, the smack-talking man who’s coached all season like he talks: bold and brash. Not Friday. Running on third-and-long? Fair catching kickoffs? Punting near midfield down 17 points in the fourth quarter?
In emphatic fashion, Notre Dame crushed the Hoosiers’ magical run, not surrendering a touchdown until 87 seconds were left on the clock. The Irish ended Cignetti’s stunning first season and won an 11th straight since that confounding home loss to Northern Illinois. They bruised and battered their in-state rival in a most unexpected meeting — two schools three hours apart that haven’t played since 1991.
They did it all in front of a roaring crowd, most of them staying until the bitter, chilly end despite a boring blowout (Notre Dame held leads of 20-3 and 27-3 in the second half).
“I’ve never been part of an environment like that,” said Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman.
The Jumbotron flashed its typical home-game antics. A singing gerbil in a leprechaun hat wooed the crowd at one point. A mic-holding priest — yes, a priest — cranked up “Mo Bamba.” And Jerome Bettis — the Bus! — revved up fans in an on-field speech at halftime.
All of it had one athletic director wondering publicly why his own playoff-bound team doesn’t get a shot to host a game.
“Seeing this Notre Dame game at home…” tweeted Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey. “A game on the BLUE would be elite.”
Indeed, it would.
But the quarterfinals are played not in on-campus venues but at bowl sites in major cities and three of them in indoor stadiums. That goes for the semifinals, too.
In a world with so many opt-outs and coaching changes, the future of the bowl structure remains a murky and uncertain topic. But the future sites of playoff games? This weekend may show us that they belong on campus.
However, it’s not so simple. College leaders are faced with a delicate balance. There is history and tradition to preserve, rightfully so. Bowl games are one of the hallmarks of the industry, the fabric to college football’s tightly knit sweater.
When college football struggled financially (there was a time), it was bowl games that provided a platform and finances. They are not to be shoved aside.
The 10 FBS conferences have entered into agreements with the six bowl games for the future of the CFP, which runs through the 2031 playoff. However, those agreements have not yet been executed and signed beyond the 2025 playoff. Change is on the horizon for the playoff format, but should change be on the horizon too for playoff sites?
Shirtless students shivering in the cold? A snow-covered campus? Those $7 beers? This is where it’s at.
“It’s crazy,” Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard said as he gazed across the stadium. “Special place.”
History was made here. We’ll always remember it.
It was the improbable culmination of a near-50-year effort of holding a multi-round College Football Playoff — an industry in which the postseason has been monopolized by the bowl structure and restricted by the academic calendar.
At least five times since 1976, college football and NCAA leaders failed to approve such an expanded playoff. Since this particular format was introduced, it took more than three years to manifest it into this glorious, on-campus spectacle with one of the format’s leading architects in attendance. Former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, who retired this past spring, attended his first Irish game this season, watching a dream realized before him.
He was part of a four-member committee that created the format in 2021 and was essential to a key compromise in the proposal. He agreed to a deal making Notre Dame ineligible for a first-round bye — a tradeoff for, as an independent, the school not having to compete in a conference championship game.
The prize this year? A home game that’s expected to generate $40 million in economic impact to the South Bend area. And it came with snow, too. Flurries began falling on the game’s eve Thursday night and blanketed the school’s campus in a white layer.
Bundled in their big coats, ski caps and wool mittens, fans poured into Notre Dame Stadium as gates opened 90 minutes before kickoff. Nearly every seat was filled in time for the venue’s announcer, Chris Ackles, to boom to the chilly crowd, “Welcome to Notre Dame Stadium,” he said before pausing. “And welcome to the College Football Playoff!”
As kickoff arrived, temperatures dipped below freezing. It was 27 degrees at the start with a windchill of 19.
It mattered not for the Golden Domers. More than 77,000 arrived here despite ticket prices that soared into the four figures when the field was announced two weeks ago.
It is on to a much warmer climate now. The Irish (12-1) get SEC champion Georgia (11-2) — likely playing without its starting quarterback — in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. The quarterfinal game kicks off on New Year’s Day evening — in an enclosed, temperature-controlled environment in a big city miles from the participants’ own campuses.
