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 only loss at now-No. 8 Ohio State.

While Cignetti is getting most of the credit, he couldn't have done it without Rourke. The younger brother of CFL QB Nathan Rourke transferred to Indiana a year ago from Ohio University, where Kurtis followed his big bro and won the MAC conference MVP award in 2022 despite tearing his ACL near the end of the season.

Kurtis was a very efficient quarterback at Ohio before his knee injury, but the 6-foot-5, 223-pound pocket passer took it to another level this year in Cignetti's pro-style offence. The Oakville, Ont., native completed a whopping 70.4 per cent of his passes for 2,827 yards and threw 27 touchdown passes with only four interceptions. Rourke ranked third in all of college football in Adjusted Total QBR — a stat measuring all aspects of a quarterback's performance (including passing, rushing and turnovers) while accounting for the strength of the defences he faced. He was even considered a top-five Heisman Trophy candidate before the loss to Ohio State, and ESPN today ranked him the 16th-best player in the playoff tournament.

As TSN's Dave Naylor wrote recently, Rourke is in uncharted territory for a Canadian quarterback. By Naylor's count, Jesse Palmer (at Florida a quarter century ago) and Christian Veilleux (at Pitt for half a season last year) are the only Canadians to start at QB for a power-conference team in the last 30 years. Palmer helped the Gators to a 10-3 record in 2000 before they lost to Miami in the Sugar Bowl at a time when there was no playoff tournament (Oklahoma beat Florida State in the national championship game).

Rourke's Hoosiers are seven-point underdogs against Notre Dame. But if he can pull off the upset, it'll boost his profile for the upcoming NFL draft, which is light on high-end QB talent.

The winner of the Indiana-Notre Dame game faces No. 2 Georgia in the quarterfinals on New Year's Day. The Bulldogs are enjoying a bye this week along with top-ranked Oregon, No. 3 Boise State and No. 4 Arizona State. The other first-round matchups, all taking place Saturday, are No. 5 Texas vs. No. 12 Clemson, No. 6 Penn State vs. No. 11 SMU and No. 8 Ohio State vs. No. 9 Tennessee.