The fairy tale that was the 2024 Indiana football season ended not with a bang but with a whimper Friday night – and with it, the cacophony of “Did the Hoosiers really deserve to be in the College Football Playoff?” naysayers ramped up their chirping.

Yes, 10th-seeded Indiana mustered only a late rally against salty Notre Dame on a frigid South Bend evening, but the resulting 27-17 loss to the 7th-seeded Fighting Irish certainly won’t tell the complete tale that was Hoosiermania this season.

For all the high-flyingness that Indiana flashed to earn a spot at the big-boy table, when the Hoosiers squared up again against said big boys … it was an entirely different story. Then again, Indiana (11-2) is far from the only team to tee it up in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus with gaudy hopes, only to be blinded by the golden helmets and century-plus of tradition.

In Friday’s case, a heaping dose of Notre Dame defense made the 1st-round Playoff medicine even less palatable. More succinctly, Notre Dame straight beat up Indiana on both sides of the line of scrimmage from kickoff to final gun. And while the Hoosiers managed to answer the bell for the next round each time despite absorbing all those power punches, any judge with a pulse would’ve awarded said rounds to the home team if this were a prizefight.

No amount of jaw-jutting from Indiana coach Curt Cignetti was going to alter the outcome once Notre Dame got going – and while Cignetti’s Hoosiers comported themselves acceptably, they were clearly outmatched by the bigger, badder Irish.

Not that Notre Dame (12-1) exactly flashed a ton of razzle-dazzle, either. In fact, all the Fighting Irish needed, ultimately, was Love – Jeremiyah Love. The sophomore erupted for the CFP-era’s longest play, a 98-yard scamper from one end of Notre Dame Stadium to the other less than 5 minutes into the game for an early 7-0 lead.

From then on, it was pretty much field goals and ball control for Notre Dame – keeping Indiana’s statistically-prodigious offense (43.3 points per game entering Friday) off the field and, when the Hoosiers did get the rock, straight punching IU in the mouth before they punted it back.

Indiana’s defense, to be fair, showed up ready to tangle. The Hoosiers’ top-ranked run defense swarmed to the football after Love’s cross-stadium scamper and kept Riley Leonard (23-of-32 for 201 yards) from hitting much deep. That kept it close enough to keep the national television audience tuned in – which I suppose is the entire point of this thing, right?

Notre Dame put Indiana out of its misery with 4:50 to play via a Leonard dime to Jordan Faison down to the Hoosier 1 and a Leonard 1-yard plunge for the final margin. Yes, Indiana finally found the end zone twice in the final 1:30 to make the margin more respectable and kept gamblers from queing up with their Notre Dame win tickets at the betting window. But that was just a last gasp, as the questions about the College Football Playoff committee’s sanity for seeding Indiana in the 12-team mix were steadily heating up to broil.

Should Indiana have been in the Playoff? Perhaps the best argument was the fact that the Hoosiers are a Big Ten program that went 11-1 – a combination that, even with the Ohio State dud and factoring in that Oregon ended the regular season as the only unbeaten team in the land meant that the Hoosiers simply felt like they belonged.

The counter-argument, of course, is that Indiana’s resume against, say, that of Alabama or South Carolina or Ole Miss or Miami was sub-standard when gazing through the rear-view window of retrospective. But in every tournament there seems to be that team that ultimately fizzles instead of sizzles … and who knows if Indiana will even end up being that squad by the end of this first-round weekend?

So once the shivering assembled dismissed into the gloaming following the first Friday night game ever at Notre Dame Stadium (the Irish teed it up on a Friday back in 1900, way before the House That Rockne Built was erected), it was finally time to conduct the autopsy on Indiana’s run.

The conclusion? The Hoosiers were undoubtedly better than anyone outside the Cignetti household could have possibly predicted, but also undoubtedly parlayed a cushy B1G schedule and the Cinderella tale into a palatable concoction worthy of a Playoff spot but certainly not filling enough for a full meal.

Beating up on a nonconference lightweight like Western Illinois and conference cupcakes like Michigan State and Purdue is one thing. But when the high-flying Hoosiers squared up against NFL-level beef in the form of Michigan, Ohio State and Notre Dame … all the confection disappeared out the window.

Sure, Indiana tried on that glass slipper via a 20-15 home victory against what was only on paper a Wolverines squad that was clearly looking ahead to The Game against Ohio State. But against the Buckeyes and Irish, the brand of football Cignetti tantalized all of us with all season long simply wasn’t good enough.

There is absolutely no question that Cignetti, the consensus national coach of the year, performed a masterful glow-up of a Hoosiers program in his first season. Indiana hung with Notre Dame on Friday more than it did against Ohio State on Nov. 23 – a desultory 38-15 outcome that caused many to wonder if Indiana truly belonged. And to squeeze the first 10-win out of the program in school history, strength or schedule be damned, more than earned Cignetti that healthy midseason contract bump he received.

The next trick, though, could likely be even tougher. Precisely no one saw Cignetti or Indiana coming when the 2024 season began. But the Hoosiers aren’t sneaking up on anyone anymore – a double-edged sword that can only help Indiana in recruiting and in the portal, but will hinder in 2025 now that the rest of the world has seen the code cracked twice.

Still, Notre Dame showed up and showed out enough to earn its 11th consecutive victory and a New Year’s Day quarterfinal spot against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. That might feel a bit like a case full of Rice-A-Roni instead of a new car in the Great Game Show of Life, but Cignetti and the Hoosiers made all of Indiana believe for the first time in history.

Next up? Validating it in 2025 – and making another Playoff committee forget the final chapter of Indiana’s Cinderella story that saw the glass slipper simply not fit in 2024.