Just over 12 months ago, Curt Cignetti was probably only front-page news in Bloomington – and there likely only for a day – when Indiana hired him to replace Tom Allen as Indiana’s football coach.

Football in Bloomington is a lot like baseball at Ohio State: something they’d like to be good at, sure, but who really cares when there is more important stuff to worry about?

In Indiana’s case, of course, the priority has always been basketball. Which is why Cignetti was barely a blip on anyone’s radar screen when he was hired Nov. 30, 2023, and then also through the spring and summer when the Hoosiers were picked to finish 17th in the 18-team Big Ten.

But something strange happened after that. Indiana football started winning. And kept winning. And suddenly couldn’t stop winning.

Now, Cignetti’s Indiana squad are bona fide college football darlings – the Little Hoosiers That Could who went and crashed the blue-blood College Football Playoff party.

Here comes the tricky part, though, the chapter that will be even more difficult to complete than all the rest: Indiana proving it belongs here.

That litmus test comes Friday night in the person of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, as blue blood as it gets in college football. Ask one of the Martians flying drones off the East Coast who their favorite football program is, and odds are they’ll say Notre Dame.

Rockne, The Gipper, Ara and Rudy. Paul Hornung, Joe Montana and Johnny Lujack. Those golden helmets inside one of the cathedrals of the sport itself. Now that’s a lineage worthy of the College Football Playoff.

Indiana? Isn’t it basketball season already?

The ascent for Cignetti and the Hoosiers has been as immediate as it has been unexpected. But it has also been helped with arguably the creampuffiest schedule available from conference HQ – as Indiana didn’t even sniff a Top 25 opponent en route to an unprecedented 10-0 start.

That meteoric rise helped Indiana – yes, Indiana – to No. 5 on the eve of its clash with No. 2 Ohio State on Nov. 23. The problem with meteors rising is that they crash to Earth just as hard, and unfortunately that’s what happened to the Hoosiers – as the Buckeyes laid a 38-15 beatdown that was arguably even more complete than the final score indicated.

Indiana’s offense was a non-starter all day long in Columbus, as quarterback Kurtis Rourke completed just 8-of-18 passes for 68 yards and the Hoosiers mustered just 153 total yards. IU’s offense set season-lows for points and total yards. The Hoosiers’ special teams didn’t do them any favors, either, fumbling a punt snap to set up a short Ohio State touchdown and allowing a punt return for another score.

What could have gone wrong, did, and with the world watching – Indiana simply looked like it didn’t belong.

Indiana still had audacious postseason dreams, though, and rebounded to dominate Purdue 66-0 in the regular-season finale.

So which Indiana offense is real? The one that scored 40+ points 8 times this season — or the one that struggled to average just 17.5 points against Michigan and Ohio State, the only 2 defenses IU faced that feature multiple NFL-type prospects in the trenches.

Those pass rushes flustered Rourke, who otherwise has been outstanding. Rourke is 2nd in the B1G with 27 TD passes and has thrown just 4 INTs. Indiana already has topped 3,000 yards passing for the first time since 2019. But Michigan and Ohio State pressured Rourke constantly, blanketed underneath routes and disrupted the timing. Michigan sacked Rourke 4 times and registered 8 tackles for loss. Ohio State sacked Rourke 5 times times and also registered 8 tackles for loss.

Statistically, neither of those defenses get home as often as Notre Dame, which has totaled 40 sacks this season. And the pass rush is only part of what makes Notre Dame’s defense special. The Irish have only allowed 9 TD passes this season and are tied for 4th the nation with 17 interceptions.

There’s a reason sportsbooks such as DraftKings have Notre Dame favored by 7.5 points.

Another problem with rising as fast as Indiana did in 2024 is figuring out a way to stay there. Put another way, college football’s Cinderella needs to conjure a way to stop the clock before it hits midnight. We have already seen the Hoosiers lay an egg in their first taste of the big time, but getting Notre Dame at night in December?

Cignetti doesn’t have the entire machine that Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman – which includes an entire freaking network, not to mention a nation of sidewalk alumni and about a zillion-year legacy head start – enjoys in his corner. The Fighting Irish recruit at a level in college football even higher than does Indiana in college basketball, with 5-stars seemingly at every position.

That doesn’t mean Notre Dame is unbeatable, not by a mean stretch. Northern Illinois (what?) proved that Sept. 10 – in South Bend, no less – dealing a 16-14 shocker that the Irish needed literally the entire season to overcome.

But that was September in the sunshine, not December in the bitter cold near the summit of the sport and in the literal shadow of Touchdown Jesus. Notre Dame may be the No. 7 seed in this Playoff, but when the ball gets teed up Friday night with the world watching – Indiana will find itself once again in uncharted territory.

The last time the fiery Cignetti and his upstart Hoosiers felt that feeling? Only 60 minutes of uncomfortable domination came their way. Will Notre Dame-Indiana just be a redux of Ohio State-Indiana, or can Indiana’s upstart coach and his upstart Hoosiers stop the hands of time before midnight strikes to keep the dream alive?