SMU's Kevin Jennings is the only quarterback starting for his hometown team in the 12-team College Football Playoff.

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and Indiana coach Curt Cignetti are football junkies at heart.

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti pursued Kurtis Rourke in the transfer portal because he wanted a proven winner.

The College Football Playoff gets started this week with four games on college campuses.

Curt Cignetti of Indiana has been named The Associated Press Coach of the Year in college football.

College football’s conference shakeup left concerns about two super conferences dominating the playoff field.

Now Notre Dame waits.

The Southeastern Conference’s losses were almost everyone else’s gain in the College Football Playoff rankings, with SMU nudging its way into the top 12 and Indiana staying in the mix at No. 10 despite a lopsided loss of its own.

The expanded Big Ten is poised to be a major player in this season’s College Football Playoff.

Indiana should be able to breathe easy.

Indiana has made the type of turnaround that had only happened once before at the power-conference level over the last decade.

Indiana Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti has been rewarded for a historic season with an eight-year contract worth an annual average of $8 million.

The signs of success can be found all around Indiana’s campus these days.

Oregon’s dominance in its first year in the Big Ten and Indiana’s monumental turnaround have helped the conference stack four of its teams in the top five of The Associated Press college football poll for the first time.

Justice Ellison ran for 105 yards and two first-half touchdowns and No. 16 Indiana continued its best start in 57 years with a 56-7 rout of Nebraska, matching the Hoosiers’ most lopsided Big Ten win in program history.

The Big Ten kicked off its season with four new teams, five new coaches and 13 schools featuring new starting quarterbacks.

The Indiana Hoosiers have hired Curt Cignetti as their new football coach. James Madison also announced Cignetti had resigned. The 62-year-old Cignetti spent the last five seasons with the Dukes, who he led to one of the most successful transition from FCS to FBS in NCAA history. He's 52-9 there with three conference titles and led No. 24 James Madison to a Sun Belt East Division title this season. Cignetti replaces Tom Allen, who was fired Sunday after seven full seasons with the Hoosiers. Cignetti says “I am excited to lead this program forward and change the culture, mindset, and expectation level of Hoosier football.”

As part of the latest extension, Cignetti will also have one year automatically added to his contract by achieving eight wins against FBS opponents in any season during the length of the contract.

The 11-1 Dukes are no stranger to the FCS playoffs, and with an offense averaging 41 points a game, they’ve been hard to stop. The Grizzlies are also operating behind a high-powered offense, and I don’t think anyone will forget their first game upset over the Washington Huskies.