The press conference introducing Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke to reporters gathered in Bloomington this week lasted just seven minutes, and there were some very good reasons for that. Firstly, he had to prepare for a hugely important football match. And perhaps even more relevant, he wouldn’t say anything inflammatory or noteworthy if he stood there for seven days.

Rourke knows as well as anyone what this week means. To this day, he was preparing to play for Ohio University – 75 miles and a football world away from Ohio State University – in a relatively meaningless season-ender against a fairly awful Akron team.

Now his preparation includes his undefeated Hoosiers working toward the most important football game in program history: a visit to the Buckeyes at their famed “Horseshoe” home, which would put the winner on the brink of a berth in the Big Ten Championship .

Kurtis Rourke’s impressive piece speaks for itself

Rourke wouldn’t say anything Tuesday that would make Saturday afternoon even more difficult, even just a little bit.

Although it’s chosen for Fox Sports’ noon hour, which features both Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff and ESPN’s perennially popular College GameDay broadcasts from the OSU campus, Rourke didn’t want to acknowledge much more than what head coach Curt Cignetti ordered.

“It’s a big game because it’s the next one,” Rourke said. “I think a lot of us really believe that knowing that we can play with anyone and that it doesn’t matter who we’re playing against, we just have to execute and everything will be fine. That’s our mentality going into the week, just like any other week.”

That’s as good as Rourke gets – did you notice him at least giving a confident “We can play with anyone?” – until he takes the field to challenge the Buckeyes’ secondary defense. OSU allows 251 yards per game. Total. Indiana’s offense exceeds that mark by more than 200 yards on average. At 28th in yards allowed, Nebraska possesses the best defense Rourke has faced yet. In that game, the Hoosiers generated 495 yards and eight touchdowns.

In so many ways beyond geography, Rourke has come a ridiculous distance in the past twelve months.

In leading the Ohio Bobcats to a 10-3 record in 2023, Rourke was named second-team All-Mid-American Conference. Now he has the fifth-best odds to win the Heisman Trophy according to Caesars Sportsbook, is one of 16 finalists for the Davey O’Brien Award as the best college quarterback and is ranked in the NFL’s top 100 for the NFL 2025. Preliminary version.

He threw for 2,410 yards in nine starts, seven of them in the Big Ten, with 21 touchdowns and just four interceptions. His completion percentage of .718 ranks sixth among regular starters at the FBS level. His passer rating of 182.7 (don’t worry, no one really understands college passer rating statistics) is impressive enough to rank third in Major College Football.

Rourke did admit that this won’t be the biggest crowd that will ever see him and his teammates play football, which can be seen as a kind of flex when you’re trying really hard. While in his penultimate season at Ohio, the Bobcats visited Penn State in early September and played in front of 107,306. Ohio Stadium’s listed capacity is only 102,780, and the Buckeyes’ largest crowd this season was 104,830. It seems unlikely that they could find a place to keep another 2,477 people at the Shoe.

“I’ve definitely played in some environments that were similar,” Rourke said. “I recognize the history behind Ohio Stadium, the number of fans and the great atmosphere there. So I’m very excited about that and ready for the challenge.

“I think it will probably be one of the loudest environments this year. We always have crowd noise (in practice) every week because it will be a crazy atmosphere anyway.

“It’s going to be a loud environment, especially early on, and we’re just going to have to quiet them down as we go.”

Did you catch that? Quiet them while we go. Maybe we underestimated Kurtis Rourke again.

Continuing what he started in Ohio

It’s not like Rourke is completely new to extraordinary quarterback play. In his second season as Ohio’s starter, 2022, he completed 69.1 percent of his passes for 25 touchdowns and 3,257 yards. He was named MAC’s Offensive Player of the Year, an award previously won by NFL QBs Ben Roethlisberger, Byron Leftwich and Chad Pennington.

The Bobcats went 20-7 in his final two years, appearing in two bowl games and once in the MAC Championship. In September 2023, they defeated Iowa State of the Big 12, with Rourke leading an 81-yard drive midway through the second half to secure a decisive field goal in a 10–7 win.

Curt Cignetti, who was hired as Indiana’s new coach on December 1, knew immediately he needed a new quarterback because the young man who started for his predecessor had entered the transfer portal. Cignetti was alerted that Rourke was available in the transfer portal.

“The first thing I did was Google him,” Cignetti told The Sporting News. “I looked at his career stats and everything, and I read all the articles I could. He was player of the year in the MAC, won a championship, won a lot of games and had really good production numbers.

“So then I put the tape on and within the first 3-4-5 times I could tell he knew how to play the position. Some guys are just programmed to play video games; he was programmed to play quarterback. ” He reminded me of Philip Rivers, who I dated a bit at NC State. He could make the throws… ran well enough to scramble out of the pocket and get a first down… but he could also make good decisions. take you back to second and ten if you found yourself in a bad spot.”

Rourke didn’t have an easy time leaving OU. His family had a long, rewarding history with Bobcats football. Starting in 2017, Rourke was the team’s top QB for seven consecutive years. All but one team finished with a winning record. Five bowl games won.

Nathan Rourke, Kurtis’ older brother, started three years on teams that compiled a 25-14 composite record. He led the MAC in yards per pass attempt twice and in passing efficiency once, and he showed his versatility by rushing for 21 touchdowns as a sophomore and 49 in his career.

When it was time to transition to professional football, Nathan says playing at a level below the power conferences became an obstacle for him. Nathan has been in and out of NFL camps and practice squads, most notably with the Jaguars in 2023 after his stellar 2022 season with the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League. That year he passed for 3,349 yards and 25 touchdowns, and ran for seven more. In 2024, after being released from the Atlanta Falcons, he returned to the BC Lions and started eight games.

With five years at OU, three years as a starter and a bachelor’s and master’s degree secured, the time seemed ideal for his younger brother to conquer that bigger stage.

The message Nathan conveyed to Kurtis was clear: “If I had the opportunity, I would 100 percent try to go somewhere in the Power 5 — the Power 4 now — and just kind of get away from that, try to play against them. ” the good competition. He clearly chose the right place and the right situation. I think it worked for him.”

Indiana football history – and more – is on the line against Ohio State

The Hoosiers have won eight NCAA championships in men’s soccer, six in men’s swimming and five in the sport they play in sneakers, but they have lost more football games than any program in major conferences. Ever. So they know what skinny looks like in the fall.

However, there was a sense that something might be different as Indiana stormed through the first four games of the 2024 season. IU defeated FIU and Western Illinois by a combined score of 108-10. At home in the Rose Bowl, UCLA fell by a final score of 42–13. Then it was Charlotte’s turn: 52-14.

Once Big Ten games started coming regularly, every week was a new opportunity for Rourke and his teammates to prove they were legit: Maryland, Northwestern on the road, a Nebraska team that was supposedly on the rise, and then Washington without Rourke to help it happened because he injured his thumb hitting an opponent’s helmet against the Huskers.

The challenges continued to mount until reigning College Football Playoff champion Michigan arrived in town and shut down the IU offense in the second half, but the defense held strong to earn a 20-15 victory.

While IU’s players and coaches have done what they can to enjoy the peace provided by an open date last Saturday, many college football fans and analysts have spent that time mocking the Hoosiers’ eligibility to participate to the first-ever twelve-team CFP.

The prevailing theory: If they lose by two touchdowns at Ohio State, they obviously don’t belong on the field. ESPN analyst Joey Galloway even suggested that Kurtis Rourke should skip the OSU game because he will be healthy and available for the CFP, and any Buckeyes loss would be mitigated by his absence.

No one in Indiana speaks from fear. “Look, we have a group of guys and coaches who have won 24 of their last 25 games,” Cignetti said, referring to the 13 players and 12 football office members who followed him from James Madison. “So we don’t have a trust problem.”

The process of luring Rourke to Bloomington was almost as quick as a 100-yard dash. Cignetti took the job on Dec. 1, 2023, and two weeks later his new quarterback was on board. Nathan Rourke told TSN that his brother noticed the success the new coaches from Indiana had enjoyed at JMU. They scored an average of 34 points. Quarterback Jordan McCloud threw for 35 touchdowns. Rourke, Cignetti and Indiana became a shotgun marriage in football heaven.

“I think we had an opportunity that he was looking for, to prove himself,” Cignetti said.

There may be a bigger stage available for Rourke than he will face at Ohio State. It depends on the outcome of the game. A Big Ten Championship appearance at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis? A College Football Playoff berth? Maybe even a game deeper into the tournament? All of that is way out of the equation right now, and a lot of it depends on the Hoosiers-Buckeyes outcome.

Nathan will be in Columbus for the game. It will be his first chance in a long time to see his brother play live. Rourke’s cheers are unlikely to overwhelm the 100,000 or so Buckeyes fans, but perhaps Kurtis can calm them down along the way. It’s unlikely he’ll have much to say after that, win or lose, but if you listen carefully you might hear something compelling.