How To Watch Indiana Football In College Football Playoff Game At Notre Dame

No. 10-seeded Indiana football plays at No. 7-seeded Notre Dame at 8 p.m. ET Friday at Notre Dame Stadium. Here's how to watch, with game time and TV information, the latest on the point spread, series history, coaching information and more.

Indiana's Myles Price (4) runs a reverse during the Indiana versus Purdue football game at Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 30, 2024. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana-Notre Dame College Football Playoff game will be broadcast on ABC and ESPN from Notre Dame Stadium at 8 p.m. ET Friday.

Those are the facts you need to watch the game. However, it’s noteworthy which network is doing the broadcasting.

For the first time since 1990, a network other than NBC is broadcasting from Notre Dame Stadium.

ABC/ESPN and TNT/MAX have exclusive rights to the College Football Playoff broadcasts. With games played at home sites in the first round, it scrambles the networks that typically broadcast games from various sites.

The Big Ten, for example, usually has home broadcasts on FOX, CBS and NBC. But both TNT/MAX (SMU-Penn State) and ABC/ESPN (Tennessee-Ohio State) will host Saturday’s CFP games from Beaver Stadium and Ohio Stadium, respectively.

As for Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish have been on NBC for so long one forgets how revolutionary their exclusive deal was at the time it was agreed upon in 1990.

The TV landscape when Notre Dame signed the deal was totally different from today. Notre Dame had been part of the College Football Association, a conglomeration of schools that pooled their TV rights starting in 1977. The CFA took on added prominence after the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the NCAA’s TV restrictions of the time were an antitrust violation. Rights could now be negotiated with the highest bidder.

Most national TV games at the dawn of the 1990s were broadcast on ABC, CBS or ESPN, and compared to today, a fraction of the games were available nationally.

Notre Dame broke away from the CFA and signed their own deal with NBC worth $38 million starting with the 1991 season, an astronomical sum at the time.

Many thought it would give Notre Dame an unfair financial advantage and tip competitive scales their way. The partnership has been a success for both parties. The Notre Dame-NBC deal has been renewed many times since and currently lasts to the 2029 season.

Since 1991, Notre Dame has not won a national championship, but a line can be drawn from the legacy of that TV deal to the world of college football today.

The NBC deal began the aggressive media rights upward spiral that continues to the present. Conferences pulled out of the CFA (the Big Ten and Pac-10 were never in the CFA and negotiated their own deals all along) and began negotiating their own deals. Conferences also began to create their own media entities – Big Ten Network was the first – to further maximize their outreach and their profits.

The TV rights game skyrocketed to the point where schools began to seek conferences that maximized their revenue over geographic and traditional ties – triggering the rounds of conference realignment that have reshaped the sport.

So if you love or hate the current college landscape of super conferences, you can partly trace it back to the early 1990s and Notre Dame’s NBC deal. It’s ironic that NBC won’t be broadcasting from the landscape that its TV deal may have spawned.

*** LIVE BLOG: And once the game starts, follow all the action on our live blog written by Todd Golden. To check that out, CLICK HERE.

How to watch Indiana vs. Notre Dame

Who: Indiana Hoosiers (11-1) vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (11-1)

What: Indiana, seeded No. 10 in the College Football Playoff bracket, and Notre Dame, seeded No. 7, will try to advance from the first round of the College Football Playoff to the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1. The winner faces Georgia in that bowl game.

When: 8 p.m. ET on Friday, Nov. 20.

Where: Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Ind.

TV: ABC and ESPN.

College GameDay broadcast: 3:30 p.m. ET Friday on ESPN.

Announcers: Sean McDonough (play-by-play), Greg McElroy (analyst), Molly McGrath (sideline).

Radio: Indiana Hoosiers Sports Network, Sirius XM (channel 84)

Radio Announcers: Don Fischer (play-by-play), Buck Suhr (analyst), John Herrick

Point spread: Notre Dame is a 7.5-point favorite and the over/under is 52.5 points as of Thursday afternoon.

Recent results: Indiana defeated Purdue 66-0 and Notre Dame won at Southern California 49-35 on Nov. 30.

Series history: Notre Dame leads 23-5-1. The teams last played in 1991, and Notre Dame has won six in a row against Indiana dating to 1951. Indiana last defeated Notre Dame in 1950 and last won at Notre Dame in 1898.

Quarterback matchup: After a tough game at Ohio State, Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke bounced back in a big way against Purdue on Nov. 30. Rourke completed 23 of 31 passes for 349 yards and 6 touchdowns in the 66-0 victory over the Boilermakers. For the season, Rourke has completed 70.4% of his passes for 2,827 yards, 27 touchdowns and just 4 interceptions. Rourke leads the nation in pass efficiency at 181.4.

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard goes about his business in a different way. Leonard rushed for 50 yards and a touchdown, completed 17 of 22 passes for 155 yards, and threw two touchdown passes in a 49-35 win at USC. For the season, Leonard has rushed for 721 yards and 14 touchdowns. He’s completed 66.2% of his passes for 2,092 yards, 16 touchdowns and five interceptions.

Weather: According to weather.com, it’s going to be 29 degrees and cloudy with a 15% chance of flurries and a north wind at 11 miles per hour at 8 p.m. in South Bend.

Meet the Coaches

Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame: Freeman is 30-9 at Notre Dame in his third season as a head coach. Prior to becoming head coach at Notre Dame, Freeman was the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the Fighting Irish in 2021. Before that, he had the same position at Cincinnati from 2017-20. He was co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Purdue in 2016 and linebackers coach for the Boilermakers from 2013-15. He had additional stints at Ohio State (2010, graduate assistant) and Kent State (2011-12). Freeman played at Ohio State from 2004-08 and in the NFL in 2009 for the Chicago Bears, Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans.

Curt Cignetti, Indiana: Cignetti, 11-1 at Indiana and 130-36 in his career, is in his first season at Indiana after a five-year run at James Madison with a 52-9 overall record. During his first three seasons at James Madison, the Dukes reached the FCS national championship once and the semifinals twice. After moving up to the FBS, they went 19-4 under Cignetti. Prior to JMU, he had a 14-9 record in two seasons at Elon and a 53-17 record in six seasons at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Before becoming a head coach, he was the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Alabama under Nick Saban from 2007-10 and held various assistant coaching positions at NC State from 2000-06. Other previous stops include Pittsburgh, Temple, Rice and Davidson. Cignetti played quarterback at West Virginia from 1979-82. His father, Frank, is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

Related stories on Indiana football

• CFP WEATHER FORECAST: Get up to date on the weather both for the drive up to South Bend and for kickoff. CLICK HERE.

• JOY OF JAILIN: Indiana linebacker Jailin Walker brings joy to his job and it's infectious for the Hoosiers. CLICK HERE.

• BRAND NAME BIAS: Despite being a close game on-paper, Todd Golden writes about the benefit of the doubt Notre Dame gets for being a national brand. CLICK HERE.

• KAMARA CONFIDENCE: Indiana defensive end Mikail Kamara embodies the confidence and hunger the Hoosiers have had throughout the 2024 season. CLICK HERE.

• WHAT CIGNETTI SAID: What Curt Cignetti said in his final press conference before Indiana's College Football Playoff game at Notre Dame. CLICK HERE.

• TURNOVER BATTLE WON'T BE EASY TO WIN ... OR LOSE: Indiana and Notre Dame both excel at forcing turnovers and avoiding them. CLICK HERE.

• TRANSFER PORTAL TRACKER: Hoosiers On SI's Transfer Portal Tracker for incomings and outgoings from and into the portal. CLICK HERE.