SOUTH BEND, Ind. – There’s a lot wrong with college football.

You’ve heard the complaints, the complaints and the grumblings. The transfer portal and NIL. Unfair resource gaps and an unregulated compensation system.

There are many things to complain about, simmering issues that need to be investigated, problems that need to be fixed.

But Friday night wasn’t one of them.

From snow-covered northern Indiana, amid frigid temperatures in a 94-year-old, packed stadium, college football – the enterprise whose engine sputters off the field – brought millions across the country spectacular history: an on-campus playoff game .

Splendid. Fantastic. Great.

Roaring crowds. Brass bands. College kids.

The Golden Dome. Land Jesus. The Linebacker Lounge.

The record shows that in the first-ever game of the 12-team College Football Playoff, seventh-seeded Notre Dame defeated 10th-seeded Indiana 27-17 in front of a frenzied home crowd in the middle of a packed campus.

This is where the college football postseason belongs. This is where college football lives, this is where it thrives. It was born in this place, on a sprawling campus, as an extracurricular activity (that’s right) for student-athletes. And just because the sport’s popularity has turned it into a billion-dollar business, just because federal judges and state lawmakers are making it a more professional entity, that doesn’t mean college football should lose the greatest gift it offers: college.

It’s in the name that you can scream loudly. College football on college campuses in college football playoff games. What an innovative thought!

Notre Dame even moved final exams up a day so students could spend their Thursday evening and Friday afternoon recovering before the big battle. They were obliged. This writer witnessed many of these while drinking 32 ounces worth of Bud Lights at the city’s famous Linebacker Lounge.

There was a lot of activity here, even though it was frozen.

At 7 a.m. Friday, 13 hours before kickoff, dozens of vehicles formed a line to gain access to campus. Around midday the pushers set up their tents. They smoked marinated meats and drank Miller High Lifes. They high-fived, hugged and cuddled for warmth.

At the school’s basketball arena, athletic director Pete Bevacqua gestured out his office window as fans marched through the snow. Maybe, he half-jokingly suggested, it wouldn’t be so bad that Notre Dame – in this playoff format – would not be eligible for a first-round bye as an independent.

“We will win the home game,” he smiled.

That’s it. That’s what it’s about. This is wonderful.

We’ve never seen it before The before – a real college football postseason matchup on a college campus. How many years were wasted? How many seasons have passed now? We could have had this much earlier.

The NFL, its big stadiums, its big cities, its subways have nothing to do with it. Sure, the Irish and the Hoosiers put together a great performance on the field – the highlight being running back Jeremiyah Love’s 98-yard touchdown run in the first quarter. But the atmosphere, the wintry weather, all the pageantry – that’s what it’s all about.

And on Saturday we get three more! First in State College, where the wind is expected to drop into the low teens for Penn State vs. SMU. And then Austin, where the SEC newcomer Longhorns face ACC power Clemson under sunny skies. And finally in Columbus, where the Big Ten and the SEC face Ohio State against Tennessee in temperatures of 20 degrees.

Maybe they’ll put on a more exciting show.

The Irish did to Indiana what Ohio State did last month — suffocating the Hoosiers’ high-powered offense with a mix of coverage and pressure. They unsettled quarterback Kurtis Rourke and held him to fewer than 180 yards passing. They made IU look like a group of Group of Five players who took one of the easiest paths of any playoff team.

Her coach also seemed out of his element. It was a somewhat mysterious game plan from Curt Cignetti, the smacking man who has been training all season to talk the way he talks: bold and brash. Not Friday. Running on third and long? Catching fair kickoffs? Trailing by 17 points near midfield in the fourth quarter?

Notre Dame emphatically crushed the Hoosiers’ magical run, not giving up a touchdown until there were 87 seconds on the clock. The Irish completed Cignetti’s impressive first season, winning for the 11th straight season since a confusing home loss to Northern Illinois. They hurt and trounced their in-state rivals in a completely unexpected encounter – two schools three hours apart that haven’t played since 1991.

They did it all in front of a roaring crowd, and most of them stayed until the bitter, chilly end despite a dull defeat (Notre Dame led 20-3 and 27-3 in the second half).

“I’ve never been in an environment like this,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said.

The Jumbotron showed off its typical home game antics. At one point, a singing gerbil wearing a leprechaun hat wooed the crowd. A priest with a microphone – yes, a priest – turned on “Mo Bamba.” And Jerome Bettis – the bus! – got the fans in the mood in a speech on the pitch at half-time.

All of this led to one athletic director publicly wondering why his own playoff team wasn’t getting a chance to host a game.

“Watching this Notre Dame game at home…” Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey tweeted. “A game on BLUE would be elite.”

In fact it would be so.

However, the quarterfinal games will not be played on campus, but rather at bowl locations in major cities and three of them in indoor stadiums. This also applies to the semi-finals.

In a world with so many exits and coaching changes, the future of the bowl structure remains a murky and uncertain topic. But the future playoff venues? This weekend could show us that they belong on campus.

However, it’s not that simple. University leaders face a delicate balance. There is history and tradition to preserve, and rightly so. Bowl games are one of the industry’s hallmarks, the fabric of college football’s tight-knit sweater.

When college football struggled financially (there was a time), it was bowl games that provided a platform and finances. They must not be pushed aside.

The 10 FBS conferences have reached agreements with the six bowl games for the future of the CFP, which runs through the 2031 playoffs. However, these agreements have not yet been executed and signed beyond the 2025 playoffs. There are changes in sight for the playoff format, but should changes also be on the horizon for playoff locations?

Naked students shivering in the cold? A snow-covered campus? Those $7 beers? Here it is.

“It’s crazy,” Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard said as he looked out across the stadium. “Special place.”

History was written here. We will always remember it.

It was the unlikely culmination of a nearly 50-year effort to hold a multi-round College Football Playoff — an industry in which the postseason was monopolized by the bowl structure and constrained by the academic calendar.

At least five times since 1976, college football and NCAA officials have failed to approve such expanded playoffs. Since the inception of this particular format, it took more than three years to manifest itself in this magnificent spectacle on campus, attended by one of the format’s leading architects. Former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, who retired last spring, attended his first Irish game of the season and saw a dream come true before him.

He was part of a four-member committee that created the format in 2021 and was instrumental in a key compromise in the proposal. He agreed to a deal that ineligible Notre Dame for a first-round bye – a compromise so that the school would not have to play in a conference championship game as an independent school.

The prize this year? A home game that is expected to have a $40 million economic impact on the South Bend region. And it also came with snow. Severe storms began to fall on the eve of Thursday night’s game, covering the school’s campus in a layer of white.

In their large coats, ski hats and wool gloves, fans streamed into Notre Dame Stadium as the gates opened 90 minutes before kickoff. Almost all the seats were filled in time when Chris Ackles, the venue’s announcer, called out to the chilly crowd: “Welcome to Notre Dame Stadium,” he said before pausing. “And welcome to the College Football Playoff!”

When kick-off came, temperatures dropped below freezing. At the start it was 27 degrees with a wind chill of 19 degrees.

It didn’t matter to the Golden Domers. More than 77,000 visitors came here, even though ticket prices shot into the four-digit range when the field of participants was announced two weeks ago.

The climate is now significantly warmer. The Irish (12-1) face SEC champion Georgia (11-2), which will likely play without its starting quarterback, in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. The quarterfinal game begins on New Year’s Eve – in a closed, temperature-controlled environment in a major city, miles from the participants’ campuses.