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The No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers open the College Football Playoff against No. 9 Alabama Thursday at 4:00 PM ET. The Hoosiers are the only remaining undefeated team out of 136 in the FBS.
Alabama vs. Indiana will be televised on ESPN and streams live DIRECTV (Free Trial).
What: College Football Playoff Quarterfinals
WHO: #9 Alabama Crimson Tide vs. No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers
When: Thursday, January 1, 2025
Where: Rose Bowl Stadium, Pasadena, California
Time: 4 p.m. ET
TV: ESPN
Live Streams: DIRECTV (Free Trial), fuboTV (free trial), Sling
Here’s a recent college football story via the Associated Press:
Bill Murphy has been an Indiana football season ticket holder for 66 years. He says he rarely missed a game, even though 55 of them were losing seasons in a historic stretch of non-bowling holidays.
One of those rare misses stands out: the 1968 Rose Bowl, when Indiana lost 14-3 to OJ Simpson and a national champion USC team. Murphy was 15 at the time and his parents weren’t on board to send him to California alone. But neither Murphy nor his parents could have predicted the drought that followed. The Hoosiers didn’t make another bowl until 1979 and then in 1986.
Now 77, Murphy wasn’t sure that day would come again. So a backup plan was created in case of an emergency.
“I told my wife, my son and my daughter, I told them, ‘If I die before we go to the Rose Bowl again, I want you to take my urn and buy the program, buy the place, set up the program and the urn on the seat, and I’ll be there with you guys,'” he said.
Murphy’s story would resonate with any lifelong Indiana football fan, though he cautions there may not be many. He grew up a die-hard supporter of Indiana’s losing football team in Bloomington, a town that rallied around a powerful and championship basketball team.
The script has turned a bit since then. Hoosiers fans have had more football to cheer for than basketball over the past season or two. A team that was once an afterthought in its community has a new brand of devoted fans with a chance to head to Pasadena for the program’s biggest game in years: Top-seeded Indiana takes on Alabama in the Grandaddy of Them All on Thursday for a chance to advance to the College Football Playoff semifinals.
The program reached new heights over the past two years under AP Coach of the Year Curt Cignetti, who held his own, eventually relinquishing the title of the losingest program in Bowl Subdivision history and handing an unwelcome crown to Northwestern earlier this year. Indiana finished the regular season as Big Ten champions with a perfect 13-0 record behind quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the school’s first Heisman Trophy winner.
Longtime fan Kevin Harrell wouldn’t miss the Rose Bowl, even though his last trip to the stadium wasn’t too long ago. When the Big Ten expands to include four teams from the West Coast in 2024, he jumped at the chance to see his team play in the iconic stadium, thinking a mid-September game against UCLA might be the closest he gets to seeing Indiana in the Rose Bowl this century.
“It’s beyond my wildest dreams,” Harrell said, admitting that having that level of confidence in the team is an unfamiliar feeling. “We always expected the worst. We could always find a new way to lose a game. It was kind of weird how quickly I went from that mindset to expecting to win. I expect this team to win every time they step on the field, and I think that’s just a testament to the job that Curt Cignetti has done.”
Not all fans earned their stripes like Harrell and Murphy. The Indiana football train is filling up.
Memorial Stadium peaked with new followers this season. Saturday “Heis-Mendoza” chants have become a regular feature this fall, and for the second year in a row, all four home conference games have been sold out.
Airlines have adapted to high demand. Delta, American and Southwest Airlines added additional direct flights from Indianapolis to Los Angeles in the days leading up to the Rose Bowl.
“People are excited because people like winners,” Murphy said. “(There aren’t) a lot of people like me who will root for their team to win or lose, and I’ve seen a lot of losing in football over the years.”
So now, 58 years later, Murphy is finally getting a chance to make amends for the missed play that has haunted him for decades.
“Fortunately for me this year, I can go and actually sit down and watch the game,” Murphy said. “I’m still pinching myself and trying to make sure I don’t see it.
Can I bet on the game?
Yes, you can bet on the game from your phone in New York State, and we’ve rounded up some of the best introductory offers to help you navigate your first bets from BetMGM, FanDuel, DraftKings, Bet365 and others.
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