BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – If you’re an Indiana football and San Francisco 49ers fan? Saturday was a good day for you.

It was a better day for Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke and defensive tackle CJ West.

Rourke was drafted by the 49ers in the seventh round of the NFL Draft on Saturday. He was taken 227th overall.

Rourke was the second Indiana player drafted on Saturday and the second taken by the 49ers. Defensive tackle West, also a one-year Hoosier transfer from the Mid-American Conference, was drafted in the fourth round by the 49ers.

Rourke only played one season for the Hoosiers, but it was a brilliant season. One in which he played with a torn ACL, something he didn’t publicly reveal until the season was over.

Rourke threw for 3,042 yards in 2024 for Indiana. He had a career-high 29 touchdown passes against just five interceptions. Rourke led the Big Ten in yards per attempt (9.5), yards per completion (13.7) and quarterback rating (176). Rourke finished ninth in the Heisman Trophy race. He was second team All-Big Ten.

Rourke is the first Hoosiers quarterback chosen directly out of Indiana since Nate Sudfeld was picked by Washington in the sixth round of the 2016 Draft.

Michael Penix Jr., who played four seasons for Indiana from 2018-21, was chosen in the first round of the 2024 Draft by Atlanta after Penix transferred to the University of Washington.

Rourke played the first five seasons of his career at Ohio University and was the Mid-American Conference Most Valuable Player in 2022. He finished his college career with 10,693 passing yards, 79 touchdown passes and 21 interceptions.

Rourke was unable to take part in throwing activities after Indiana’s season concluded as he had surgery on his injured knee. Rourke attended the NFL Combine in February, but did not take part in any drills.

Lance Zierlein of NFL.com wrote the following scouting report on Rourke.

“Rourke earns a draftable grade because of his size, experience and production. He’s coming off an ACL tear, but the injury might not have a major impact on his draft slotting since his game isn’t built on mobility,” Zierlein said.

“Rourke’s evaluation requires 2023 tape to get a feel for his delivery and velocity when his knee is stable. While he can make pro throws, the accuracy and placement is average,” Zierlein continued. “He’s a decent field-reader who throws with adequate touch and anticipation. Rourke played winning football in 2024 and he’s plenty tough, but he needs to take better care of the football if he wants to stick with an NFL team.”

Whether that hurt his draft status or not is unknown, but in the end, Rourke heard his name called.

Rourke will be behind established 49ers starter Brock Purdy. Other quarterbacks on the 49ers roster include Mac Jones and Tanner Mordecai.

Eleven quarterbacks were chosen ahead of Rourke. University of Miami quarterback Cam Ward was chosen first overall by the Tennessee Titans and Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss (New York Giants, 1st round) was picked on Thursday.

Tyler Shough of Louisville (New Orleans Saints, 2nd round), Jalen Milroe of Alabama (Seattle Seahawks, 3rd round) and Dillon Gabriel of Oregon (Cleveland Browns, 3rd round) were picked on Friday.

Shedeur Sanders of Colorado (Cleveland Browns, 5th round), Kyle McCord of Syracuse (Philadelphia Eagles, 6th round), Will Howard of Ohio State (Pittsburgh Steelers, 6th round), Riley Leonard (Indianapolis Colts, 6th round), Graham Mertz of Florida (Houston Texans, 6th round), Cam Miller of North Dakota State (Las Vegas Raiders, 6th round) were picked on Saturday.

SAN FRANCISCO – New curbside chargers for electric vehicles are in place in San Francisco, as part of a program to bring innovators to San Francisco called Yes SF.

Pilot Program

What we know:

On Friday, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the cutting-edge technology took place at 55 Fillmore Street near Duboce Park.

“I’m really happy to be the first one to use this service,” Mario Landau-Holdsworth, a San Francisco EV owner, said as he plugged in a cable to charge his Chevy Volt.

The two chargers in the pilot program are built by the Brooklyn-based company It’s Electric. The company provides people with their own cable for their EV to plug into a curbside charger. That is an important piece of infrastructure for EV owners who don’t have a garage.

“I was an EV early adopter, but the challenge is if you don’t have a garage, you can’t charge your car at home,” Landau-Holdsworth said.

“I’ve been emailing SFMTA trying to get these installed and finally, after five years, it’s happened,” Adam Gill, another San Francisco EV owner, said as he plugged in his Tesla.

“The goal right now is to see what works in San Francisco and then the long-term goal is to scale by the hundreds,” Tyrone Jue, Director of the San Francisco Environment Department, said.

Grant money

This pilot program is part of Yes SF, a larger citywide public-private partnership which offered 14 innovation grants in 2023. The Yes SF program aims to pave the way for environmental start-up entrepreneurs to bring their green technology solutions to San Francisco.

Tiya Gordon, Co-Founder & COO of It’s Electric received one of the grants.

“They helped us move through all the right doors of all the right offices to speak to the right people. They really held our hand,” Gordon said.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce opened a Yes SF headquarters earlier this year at 220 Montgomery with a workspace and café.

“It’s a partnership between the Chamber of Commerce, Deloitte, Salesforce, Citibank. We work very closely with the city of San Francisco on this,” Emily Abraham, the SF Chamber of Commerce Yes SF Director, said.

Abraham says eleven of the 14 innovators have deployed their products in the city over the past year.

This week, Yes SF announced a second round of awards, with one dozen more innovators sharing in a $1-million fund.

“The hope is that they’ll use price-funding to hire up, open space, expand in San Francisco. And that’s a big point of this location here too,” Abraham said.

Successful model 

The World Economic Forum is also a partner and says Yes SF is so successful, they want to replicate the model in other cities and countries.

“It’s exceeded expectations,” said Jeff Merritt, World Economic Forum Urban Transformation Director. “We’ve now built out a sustainable innovators network so that we can provide a lot of support to entrepreneurs from around the world who want to come to San Francisco to not only set up shop but deploy their sustainability solutions.”

“We announced in January this year in Davos at the World Economic Forum to scale this globally,” Merritt said, noting the plan is to expand the Yes SF model to a Yes Cities program in Bangalore, India and a city on the East Coast within the coming years.