Canadian QB Kurtis Rourke leads college football's most surprising team into the playoffs

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It's a very interesting time for U.S. college football. The rise of NIL (name, image and likeness) deals and the transfer portal have revolutionized the sport as empowered players now routinely switch schools in search of more sponsorship money, a better team situation or both. 

Another seismic change comes to life this weekend as the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff kicks off — a big expansion from the four-team format of the past decade. And the opening game has Canadian quarterback Kurtis Rourke leading the most surprising team in the bracket into the hallowed home of the most storied program in college football.

The contest takes place on Friday night at ancient Notre Dame Stadium, where the seventh-ranked Fighting Irish will take on Rourke's No. 10 Indiana. Notre Dame is an 11-time national champion and the home of such mythical figures as the Four Horsemen, Knute Rockne and the Gipper. Indiana is a basketball-centric school with a pitiful football past: it has lost more games than any other school in the history of top-tier college football.

But these are not your father's (or grandfather's or great-grandfather's) Hoosiers. Brash new head coach Curt Cignetti took over a program that went 8-27 over the past three years and (with aggressive use of the transfer portal) turned it around more dramatically than anyone could have predicted. Indiana improved to a stunning 11-1 this season and finished second in the powerful Big Ten to Oregon (13-0), the top-ranked team in the country. The Hoosiers were ranked as high as fifth last month before suffering their