On Friday night, college football fans across the country will be treated to a spectacle that’s never been seen in the sport’s 155-year history.
Not only will the start of the College Football Playoff mark the first time that it will be occurring as a 12-team event, but the initial games, long reserved for bowls played at neutral-site venues, will be held on campus, bringing the sport closer to the pageantry and passion that define it.
The first of those four first-round matchups comes with an added twist — it will be pitting in-state foes against one another.
REQUIRED READING:Notre Dame football defense pushes ‘all chips in’ ahead of CFP opener vs. Indiana
The playoff will kick off Friday night when No. 10 seed Indiana makes the relatively short trip north to take on No. 7 seed Notre Dame at Notre Dame Stadium, with the winner advancing to face No. 2 seed Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on January 1.
Though the Hoosiers and Fighting Irish are located within the same state, Friday’s game will be something of a novelty for them, too — not because they’re meeting in the playoff, but because they’re meeting at all. Despite their campuses being separated by only about 200 miles, they seldom play one another.
Here’s what you need to know about the history between Indiana and Notre Dame football, including the number of all-time matchups, the series record and more:
Indiana vs Notre Dame football history
Indiana and Notre Dame football first squared off in 1898 in South Bend, with the Hoosiers coming away with an 11-5 victory over a Fighting Irish team that went 4-2 that season, 20 years before Knute Rockne made his debut on the Notre Dame sideline. Indiana finished that season 4-1-2, losing only to archrival Purdue.
The Irish would get some measure of revenge the following season, when they shut out the Hoosiers 17-0.
It marked the second of five consecutive years in which the two programs played. Since then, however, their meetings have been far more infrequent.
Indiana vs Notre Dame all-time games
Friday’s College Football Playoff game between Indiana and Notre Dame will be the 30th time the programs have faced off.
Many of their previous matchups were held in bygone eras. The Hoosiers and Irish have played only once since 1958, with 19 of their first 29 contests taking place before World War II. On Friday, they’ll meet for the first time since 1991.
REQUIRED READING:Transfer portal tracker: Who’s in, who’s out for Notre Dame football
Why don’t Indiana and Notre Dame play each other?
That relative lack of all-time matchups raises a natural question: why don’t Notre Dame and Indiana play more often?
The answer is multi-faceted.
For one, the two aren’t in the same conference, which would have guaranteed more meetings over the past century, though in the 18-team Big Ten, it would be far from a certainty that they’d get to play each other most years.
While Notre Dame is an independent program, it plays a national schedule and has longstanding series with Navy (97 all-time games) and USC (95). Even in the region, the Irish have turned elsewhere for games. They have played Indiana’s chief rival, Purdue, 88 times, with the Boilermakers’ West Lafayette campus about an hour closer to South Bend than Bloomington. Notre Dame has also played Michigan State 79 times and Michigan 44 times.
Since all of their non-football programs joined the ACC ahead of the 2013-14 academic year, the Irish have been required to play an average of five games a season against ACC teams over a 12-season stretch from 2014-25.
Efforts had been made on Indiana’s part to get Notre Dame on the schedule. Former Hoosiers athletic director Fred Glass and former Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick were friends and former law partners, but even that rapport wasn’t enough to get Indiana and Notre Dame to play after Glass took over at his alma mater in the late 2000s.
“Jack is a Bloomington boy, so he’s generally sympathetic to IU, but it became clear pretty quickly it wasn’t going to work out,” Glass said to the Bloomington Herald-Times.
Friday’s playoff showdown won’t be the last time Indiana and Notre Dame will play. The schools have agreed to a two-game, home-and-home series, with a 2030 game in South Bend and a return to Bloomington in 2031.
REQUIRED READING:Why it took the CFP for Indiana and Notre Dame to play in football
Indiana vs Notre Dame series record
Notre Dame leads the all-time series with Indiana, with a 23-5-1 record against the Hoosiers. The Irish have won 20 of their past 21 games against Indiana dating back to 1908 after losing four of the first seven matchups.
Notre Dame is 13-1-1 against Indiana in games in South Bend.
When was the last time Indiana beat Notre Dame?
Indiana hasn’t beaten Notre Dame since 1950 and will enter Friday’s contest riding a six-game losing streak against the Irish.
The Hoosiers’ 1950 victory gave Notre Dame and coach Frank Leahy just their second loss since 1945. The Irish, which had won three of the previous four national championships, went 4-4-1 that season.
