Indiana and Notre Dame will face off in the first round of the College Football Playoff thanks to the success of transferred quarterbacks.
Dec 18, 2024 at 08:32 AM ET Indiana coach Curt Cignetti pored through the transfer portal last December, looking for a proven quarterback with a winning resume who could quickly become the cornerstone in another rebuilding project.Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman had a far simpler pitch to former Duke quarterback Riley Leonard — win a national championship and go down in Fighting Irish lore.
Both coaches took big swings on their respective one-year hired guns and on Friday, they'll reap the reward when Rourke leads the 10th-seeded Hoosiers against the seventh-seeded Fighting Irish in what looked like an impossible first-round College Football Playoff matchup all those months ago. “We've had to prove, a lot of us have had to prove we belong wherever we are,” Rourke said. “It just fuels us, knowing that we're counted out and we're the underdog and we always will be — at least for this year — so we can go in and play freely and that we're capable of competing with anybody.' For Rourke, Leonard, Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel and Ohio State quarterback Will Howard, there won't be a next year. Each transferred to their playoff-bound schools with one college season left, so whatever happens over the next month must suffice. If any of the four bring home a national championship, they could cement this model for years or decades given what all four have achieved.They broke the school records for single-season wins, scuttled preseason projections of a 17th-place finish in the 18-team Big Ten by tying for second — ahead of perennial powers Michigan and Ohio State, came within a tiebreaker of playing for their first conference crown since 1967 and earned one of the precious 12 playoff bids. Cignetti left nothing to chance. He brought most of his staff and 13 players from James Madison to Indiana, and the continuity helped speed up the transitio
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