Who are the referees for Notre Dame vs. Indiana CFP game?
On Friday night, the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff will begin as 10-seed Indiana takes on in-state rival and 7-seed Notre Dame to kick off the first of four first-round matchups. There are plenty of storylines to focus on, from Curt Cignetti's remarkable year-one turnaround of a previously dormant Hoosiers program to the Irish flying under the radar after the early-season loss to Northern Illinois. These teams haven't played in decades, but the animosity still runs deep, and we might even get some snow in South Bend as the cherry on top.
If there's one thing fans don't want to be talking about, though, it's the officiating. Unfortunately, given everything we've seen over the past few months, that doesn't seem very likely. There will be stars all over the field in this game, from Notre Dame's Riley Leonard, Jeremiyah Love and Howard Cross to Indiana's Kurtis Rourke and Elijah Sarratt, and we'd much prefer to see them decide the game rather than the refs. But which officials will be on the field on Friday night? Let's take a look at the whole crew.
Who are the refs for Indiana-Notre Dame College Football Playoff matchup? Full officiating crew
The CFP has divvied up the eight first-round and quarterfinal games among the Power 4 conferences, with each conference responsible for two apiece (and no conference allowed to officiate a game in which one of its teams is playing). Indiana-Notre Dame will be refereed by a Big 12 crew that brings plenty of experience to the table, led by head ref David Alvarez.
Name | Officiating role |
|---|---|
David Alvarez | Head referee |
Marlow Fitzgerald | Umpire |
Andy Warner | Head line-judge |
Kelly Deterding | Line judge |
Gabriel DeLeon | Field judge |
Fulton Carson | Side judge |
Donnie Aultman | Back judge |
Dan Scanlan | Center judge |
Kevin Mar | Alternate |
Gene Semko | Replay official |
Tony Bates | Replay communicator |
There's plenty of big-game experience here. Warner, Deterding, DeLeon, Carson and Aultman all officiated at least one game during last year's New Year's Six bowls, while Warner, DeLeon and Scanlan all participate in the Mackie Development Program, the NFL’s development and training pipeline for officials.
Of course, none of that is a guarantee that we won't see some sort of officiating controversy during Friday night's game. And if something were to happen to any of the first-team crew, we could be in for some drama: Alternate Kevin Mar's crew was involved in the controversial ending to the Holy War between Utah and BYU earlier this season, in which what would've been a game-ending stop for the Utes was wiped off the board due to a defensive holding call that left all of Salt Lake City furious.