BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana-Notre Dame College Football Playoff game will broadcast from Notre Dame Stadium on Friday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and ESPN.

These are the facts you need to watch the game. What’s notable, however, is which network is doing the broadcasting.

For the first time since 1990, a network other than NBC will broadcast from Notre Dame Stadium.

ABC/ESPN and TNT/MAX have exclusive rights to broadcast the College Football Playoff. Since the first round games will be played at home locations, the networks that normally broadcast games from different locations will be confused.

The Big Ten, for example, typically has home broadcasts on FOX, CBS and NBC. But both TNT/MAX (SMU-Penn State) and ABC/ESPN (Tennessee-Ohio State) will host Saturday’s CFP games at Beaver Stadium and Ohio Stadium, respectively.

As for Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish have been on NBC for so long that it’s easy to forget how revolutionary their exclusive contract was when it was agreed to in 1990.

The television landscape when Notre Dame signed was vastly different than it is today. Notre Dame was part of the College Football Association, an association of schools that pooled their television rights beginning in 1977. The CFA gained additional significance after the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the NCAA’s television restrictions at the time violated antitrust law. The rights could now be negotiated with the highest bidder.

In the early 1990s, most nationally televised games were broadcast on ABC, CBS, or ESPN, and compared to today, only a fraction of games were available nationally.

Notre Dame broke away from the CFA and signed its own contract with NBC starting in the 1991 season worth $38 million, an astronomical sum at the time.

Many thought it would give Notre Dame an unfair financial advantage and shift the competition in their direction. The partnership was a success for both sides. The contract between Notre Dame and NBC has since been extended many times and currently runs through the 2029 season.

Notre Dame hasn’t won a national championship since 1991, but the legacy of that TV deal can be traced to the modern world of college football.

The NBC deal began the aggressive upward spiral in media rights that continues to this day. The conferences withdrew from the CFA (the Big Ten and Pac-10 were never in the CFA and were negotiating their own deals all along) and began negotiating their own deals. Conferences also began creating their own media units — Big Ten Network was the first — to further maximize their reach and profits.

The TV rights game skyrocketed to the point where schools began looking for conferences that maximized their revenue over geographic and traditional ties – sparking the rounds of conference realignment that transformed the sport.

So if you love or hate the current superconference collegiate landscape, you can trace it in part to the early 1990s and Notre Dame’s NBC deal. It’s ironic that NBC won’t be reporting from the environment its TV deal may have created.

*** LIVE BLOG: And once the game starts, follow all the action in our live blog from Todd Golden. To find out, CLICK HERE.

Here’s how to watch Indiana vs. Notre Dame

WHO: Indiana Hoosiers (11-1) vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (11-1)

What: Indiana, the No. 10 seed in the College Football Playoff, and Notre Dame, the No. 7 seed, will try to advance from the first round of the College Football Playoff to the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1. The winner will advance to the Georgia Bowl game.

When: 8 p.m. ET on Friday, November 20th.

Where: Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Ind.

TV: ABC and ESPN.

College GameDay broadcast: Friday, 3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

Announcer: Sean McDonough (play-by-play), Greg McElroy (analyst), Molly McGrath (sideline).

Radio: Indiana Hoosiers Sports Network, Sirius XM (Channel 84)

Radio announcer: Don Fischer (play-by-play), Buck Suhr (analyst), John Herrick

Distribution of points: Notre Dame is the 7.5-point favorite and the over/under is 52.5 points as of Thursday afternoon.

Current results: Indiana defeated Purdue 66-0 and Notre Dame won 49-35 on Nov. 30 in Southern California.

Series history: Notre Dame leads 23-5-1. The teams last played in 1991, and Notre Dame has won six straight times against Indiana since 1951. Indiana last beat Notre Dame in 1950 and last won at Notre Dame in 1898.

Quarterback matchup: After a tough game at Ohio State, Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke rebounded significantly against Purdue on November 30th. Rourke completed 23 of 31 passes for 349 yards and 6 touchdowns in a 66-0 win over the Boilermakers. This season, Rourke has completed 70.4% of his passes for 2,827 yards, 27 touchdowns and just 4 interceptions. Rourke leads the nation in passing efficiency with 181.4.

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard goes about his business differently. Leonard rushed for 50 yards and a touchdown, completed 17 of 22 passes for 155 yards and threw two touchdown passes in a 49-35 win at USC. This season, Leonard has rushed for 721 yards and 14 touchdowns. He completed 66.2% of his passes for 2,092 yards, 16 touchdowns and five interceptions.

Weather: According to Weather.com, it will be 29 degrees and cloudy in South Bend at 8 p.m., with a 15% chance of thunderstorms and a north wind at 11 mph.

Meet the trainers

Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame: Freeman is 30-9 in his third season as head coach at Notre Dame. Before becoming the head coach at Notre Dame, Freeman was the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the Fighting Irish in 2021. Before that, he held the same position at Cincinnati from 2017 to 2020. He was co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Purdue in 2016 and linebackers coach with the Boilermakers from 2013-15. He had additional positions at Ohio State (2010, graduate assistant) and at Kent State (2011-12). Freeman played at Ohio State from 2004 to 2008 and in the NFL in 2009 for the Chicago Bears, Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans.

Curt Cignetti, Indiana: Cignetti, 11-1 at Indiana and 130-36 in his career, is in his first season at Indiana after five years at James Madison with an overall record of 52-9. During his first three seasons at James Madison, the Dukes reached the FCS national championship once and the semifinals twice. After promotion to the FBS, they went 19-4 under Cignetti. Prior to JMU, he had a 14-9 record in two seasons at Elon and a 53-17 record in six seasons at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Before becoming head coach, he was wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Alabama under Nick Saban from 2007 to 2010 and held various assistant coaching positions at NC State from 2000 to 2006. Other previous stops include Pittsburgh, Temple, Rice and Davidson. Cignetti played quarterback at West Virginia from 1979 to 1982. His father, Frank, is in the College Football Hall of Fame.