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 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 SEC’s automatic bid and first-round bye by beating Texas in overtime on Saturday. The Bulldogs have won all three meetings with Notre Dame, all of them high-stakes games, and never have faced Indiana.
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. 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 game 23-17 in Athens, Ga., when both teams were in the top 10.
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