Indiana vs Notre Dame: The football rivalry that wasn’t takes center stage in CFP first round

BLOOMINGTON — Notre Dame has mostly rebuffed Indiana football’s efforts to bring the teams together despite the schools being separated by less than 200 miles.

Was it intentional? That’s up for debate.

Notre Dame had other priorities as it looked to build nationally focused schedules in support of its iconic brand while juggling a series of traditional rivalries. The Hoosiers never fit into those plans outside of a one-off game in 1991.

The schools have a future home-and-home series on the books that is anything but certain given the changing landscape of college football, but that’s not a concern this week after the College Football Playoff put the programs on a collision course.

The No. 8 Hoosiers (11-1; 8-1 Big Ten) will visit South Bend for a first-round CFP matchup on Friday, Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. in a game that could define the future of football in the Hoosier State.

While Indiana hasn’t reached anywhere near the same heights of Notre Dame on the gridiron — the Irish have more national titles (11) than IU has bowl wins (three) — coach Curt Cignetti labeled the program an “emerging superpower” after guiding the Hoosiers to a historic eight-win turnaround.

“I think all the pressure to win the game is on Notre Dame,” Indiana’s former athletic director Fred Glass said. “A lot of people nationally don’t even think IU belongs in the College Football Playoff. Under all those circumstances, if Indiana beats Notre Dame at Notre Dame, and knocks them out of the national championship playoff, I think that would be a historic humiliation of epic proportion for Notre Dame. I think the pressure is completely on them.”

It might be enough to even kick off a true rivalry between the schools.

Indiana and Notre Dame football separated by more than just distance

Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson has a unique perspective on the IU-Notre Dame series as a Michigan City native who regularly attended football games in South Bend during his childhood.

Dolson went on to become a fixture in IU’s athletic department after graduating from the school. He famously spent time as a student manager for Bob Knight and worked his way up from various fundraising roles. 

“When I came down to Bloomington, Notre Dame felt like it was in another part of the United States in some ways,” Dolson said. “There was so much focus on Indiana and Purdue, and we didn’t have a series, it just didn’t feel like they were in the same state. Obviously, they aren’t in a conference, I think that makes it different as well. It just was always different.”

Many football alums feel the same. 

Indiana assistant athletic director for alumni relations Mark Deal, who was a member of IU’s famed 1979 team that won the Holiday Bowl, grew up stepped in Hoosiers’ lore. His father, Mutt, was a captain for the 1945 team that won the Big Ten and regaled him with stories of his decorated career.

The team’s trip back to South Bend in 1941 when Mutt was a then sophomore didn’t conjure the same enmity as battles against Purdue or Michigan State.

“He never even talked about it, hell, I grew up 50 minutes from Notre Dame,” Deal said. “I went to Notre Dame games as a kid. It’s just not a bitter rivalry. You didn’t hate Notre Dame, you admired them. They were just another team you kind of watched from afar.”

There was talk through the years about scheduling a series, but it wasn’t until Dolson initiated talks in 2021 that they locked down dates. The schools agreed to play a 2030 game in South Bend and 2031 game in Bloomington.

Those conversations came as the Big Ten was requiring teams to schedule at least one non-conference Power Five opponent annually, a requirement the league has since dropped.

Indiana rolled out a series of scheduling announcements that year including a home-and-home series against the University of Virginia (2027 and 2028), future games at Memorial Stadium against Old Dominion (2025) and Colorado State (2026), and a 2026 game against UConn.

“There were a lot of moving parts on our schedule, it was like a bunch of moves on a chess board,” Dolson said. “That was interesting how it all fell into place, but we just thought it would be a great thing to add that kind of marquee game.”

It was the first discussions between the schools since Glass, Dolson’s predecessor, made similar overtures to Notre Dame when he took over in 2009. He took the job the same year his friend and former law partner, Jack Swarbrick, was named Notre Dame’s athletic director.

“The IU job came out of nowhere for me, and I called him to ask is this a good gig? Is this something I want to do?” Glass said. “He strongly encouraged me to take it. We had worked together with each other for 15 years prior to that on a variety of initiatives for the city of Indianapolis. When I was pursing the Super Bowl, I pulled in Jack to help me with it.”

That rapport didn’t prompt any change in Notre Dame’s ambivalence about scheduling the Hoosiers.

“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.

Dolson said he always felt Notre Dame simply “didn’t have room” for Indiana given its list of rivalry games that include Navy (97 games), USC (95 games) and a handful of other Big Ten teams.

Notre Dame plays trophy games against Purdue (88 games) and Michigan State (79 games). Its rivalry with Michigan that predated all of them.

The first matchup between the schools was in 1887.

After a lengthy hiatus, Notre Dame and Michigan became must-see television starting with “The Reunion Game” in 1978. They played almost annually after that through 2014.

Some of those rivalries were upended when Notre Dame agreed to play 60 games against ACC teams from 2014 to 2025. That left even less room for a potential game against Indiana.

“I didn’t consider it dismissive,” Glass said, with a pause. “It just wasn’t going to happen given the schedule that Notre Dame needed to pursue, but I’m a little skeptical of whether they would have scheduled it cause it feels like there would be a lot of downside and not a ton of upside.”

Indiana and Notre Dame basketball can’t bridge the divide

As Indiana’s football coach, Lee Corso brought a surprise guest to practice before the 1979 team’s opener. 

“We were doing two-a-days, and out comes Digger Phelps,” Deal said. 

The then-Notre Dame basketball coach was friends with Corso, and stopped practice to give the team a pep talk. His message was simple — there was nothing stopping the Hoosiers from reaching a bowl game for the first time in more than a decade. 

In the years that followed, Phelps joked with Corso that he should have received a bowl ring for IU’s 38-37 win over BYU in the Holiday Bowl.

Phelps was also friends with former IU basketball coach Bob Knight and their friendship ensured the programs were a fixture on each other’s schedule.

“They always looked forward to playing each other,” former IU sports information director Kit Klingelhoffer said. 

Their first matchup came after the dedication ceremony at a newly-built Assembly Hall in 1971 — Knight and Phelps’ first seasons at their respective schools. The Hoosiers won, 94-29.

The series produced some other memorable moments.

During Indiana’s undefeated 1975-76 season, the Hoosiers escaped with a 63-60 win in a thriller. The Irish returned to Assembly Hall two years later as the undefeated No. 2 in the country. IU guard Wayne Radford’s free throws with four seconds to go gave the Hoosiers a 67-66 win.

“That was a hell of a game, Adrian Dantley versus Scott May,” Deal said. “Those games were always in December before Christmas and always had a packed house.”

The schools remained frequent sparring partners after the coaches left — Knight ended up with a 14-5 record against Phelps — and they would later take part in the Crossroads Classic, an annual tournament at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, alongside Purdue and Butler. 

It highlighted the positive relationships between the athletic departments, but it never opened the door to bringing the football teams together on a more frequent basis.

 “There’s an inverse relationship between IU football and basketball and Notre Dame football and basketball,” Glass said. “Notre Dame has a national following, crazy fan base with a lot of success in football, but in basketball not so much. Indiana has traditional been a blue-blood power house in basketball, but not so much in football.”

1991 Indiana-Notre Dame game was a glimpse at what could have been

Leading up to Selection Sunday, Indiana’s legendary play-by-play voice Don Fischer had a lot of fans asking him who he hoped IU would draw. 

“I want to play Notre Dame, are you kidding me?” Fischer would ask. “I was excited about that possibility.” 

Fischer has called more than 2,000 Indiana football and basketball games. He’s called four NCAA men’s basketball title games and all but one of IU’s 13 bowl appearances — the 1968 Rose Bowl predated his tenure — but he’s only called one IU-Notre Dame football game. 

The prospect of a return to South Bend was thrilling. 

“It’s Notre Dame,” Fischer said. “They are a national program and they’ve been a national program as long as I’ve been alive.” 

Fischer was on the call when Indiana opened the 1991 season against Notre Dame in their first meeting in 33 years. The game pitted IU coach Bill Mallory against fellow Woody Hayes’ disciple Lou Holtz — they spent the 1968 season together on Ohio State’s staff. It was the first Irish game that aired on NBC as part of the school’s ground-breaking television contract with the network.

“There was a tremendous amount of excitement,” Fischer said. “It was huge, it was the opening game of the season on top of that, so everybody was all jacked up.”

Glass was working in the Governor’s office at the time as the chief of staff for Evan Bayh. It was such a big game in the state that it helped grease the wheels for a long-requested construction project from fans who regularly made the trek up to South Bend to fix what he described as a “notorious pinch point” on a railroad track north of Kokomo.

The Hoosiers had a talented team with Trent Green at quarterback and Vaughn Dunbar in the backfield. Dunbar, who set a single-season school rushing record that year with 1,805 yards, had 33 carries for 161 yards in the game.

The Irish won 49-27, but the game was more competitive than the final score indicates. There were five lead changes in the first half and the Irish didn’t pull away until scoring back-to-back touchdowns at the end of the second quarter that were separated by a surprise on-side kick. 

“There’s been a lot of years where IU wasn’t competitive, but they would’ve had a chance to beat Notre Dame if they played more regularly in those (Bill) Mallory years,” Fischer said. “Mallory’s teams were really physical, tough teams.”

Klingelhoffer, who retired in 2012 after spending four decades in IU’s athletic department, agrees. He looked wondered what the result would have been had it taken place towards the end of the 1991 season. 

“We installed a new (4-3) defense, but we got better as the year went on,” Klingelhoffer said.

As exciting as was for fans, that game didn’t lead to further discussions about extending the series, Klingelhoffer said. The one-off IU-Notre Dame game was agreed to in 1983 with the agreement predating both Mallory’s and Holt’z tenure at the schools.

It’s why you won’t Klingelhoffer hear use the word rival when talking about the College Football Playoff matchup.

“The facts are facts,” Klingelhoffer said. “You got to play a team over and over again, just like for us with Purdue and Michigan State. It was more of a rivalry game for us against Kentucky.”

As for why the teams remained on their respective sides of the state, Fischer prefers to believe the theory he most-often hears from Hoosier fans. 

“The joke has always been they are just too scared,” Fischer said, with a laugh. “That’s really why they don’t want to schedule us.”

Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.