Business Unusual: The Tailgater in Your Living Room What if there was a service to match rabid sports fans with home owners across the country?

It sounds like an idea hatched over an alumni weekend, after more than a few beers: What if there was a housing network just for college football fans? A service that would match up all those rabid Wildcats, Bulldogs, Warriors and Cougars with flat-screen-equipped, Jacuzzi-tubbed homeowners across the country?

Now there's a party in the making--and the concept behind Gameday Housing, an online brokerage run by three Notre Dame alumni. It all started a few years ago, when Geoffrey Polk, a 28-year-old Chicago tax attorney, bought a second home in South Bend, Ind., for the sole purpose of watching his beloved Fighting Irish. Soon, he was renting it to other fans too.

Then last July, he and his college pals Chris Brusznicki and Tom Alessi went pro: Polk and Brusznicki quit their day jobs and worked round the clock to scale their South Bend rental operation into a national one.