Indiana's Historic Football Season and Their CFP Hopes

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00:00Let's talk to Zach Osterman with the Indy Star and he covers the Hoosiers.

00:07Zach, it's good to see you.

00:09I went to Indiana and believe it or not, they've never won 10 games.

00:16They've never been number five in the country.

00:20They've never been in a conversation for, frankly, a BCS playoff, any kind of anything.

00:30I don't ever remember them being that highly ranked as they head to Columbus for an absolutely

00:37huge game Saturday against the Buckeyes.

00:40Yeah, I don't think, I feel like maybe that 67 season they might have been ranked higher.

00:46There was a stretch there and obviously I'm not old enough to remember it with the AP

00:50only did a top 10, I think.

00:53And so I think they were in it and then out of it and then back in it.

00:57Because if I'm not mistaken, that is the only other time in Indiana's history it's played

01:02a game and both teams were ranked in the top five.

01:05So this is the first time it's ever happened in the regular season.

01:07The 67 Rose Bowl was obviously a postseason game, but the only time it's happened in the

01:13history of the AP poll.

01:14I mean, as you say that they'd never won 10 games in a season, this is obviously their

01:18best start to a season.

01:20I mean, this is, I feel like I've lost track of all of the sort of firsts that I mentioned

01:26in every story I write.

01:27It's been that kind of year for Indiana.

01:30So does Signetti make more money than Woodson?

01:35Signetti makes more money now, I guess, he did already, if I'm not mistaken.

01:40And I'd have to go back and look at where the two contracts lined up after Woodson signed

01:45his extension.

01:46I'm assuming that that contract extension has gone into effect.

01:50But either way, the point is, if you think about it on a year by year basis, he actually

01:53makes more than any other Indiana University employee has ever made.

01:57And I believe any public state employee because Jeff Brown didn't make this much money at

02:02Purdue either.

02:03So I mean, obviously, Notre Dame, I think is paid coaches more and that's a private

02:06institution and we never know quite what those come out to.

02:10But I think he is the highest paid employee in the history of basically the state of Indiana.

02:16Yeah, the Catholics are great at hiding things.

02:19They've always been fantastic.

02:21They should run all those scavenger hunts.

02:24So anyway, Indiana, do you think it's possible that it's become, well, like, it's pretty

02:31obvious the football team is better than the basketball team.

02:34Basketball team hasn't mattered forever.

02:36I went to a game there last year.

02:38I saw them beat North Carolina in February something in the freezing cold.

02:43That place was lit that night at Assembly Hall.

02:46Is it surreal for you to see this football team pass the basketball?

02:52Indiana has been a basketball school since before Christ.

02:55And I did five years with Bob Knight and the 87 National Championship.

03:00I was there for all of that.

03:02I was there for Alfred's career, all of it.

03:05All I know is that football now has passed Indiana basketball.

03:08No, I mean, it definitely feels that way.

03:11I tell people when they ask, like, this is a football town now.

03:13And I think it, you know, I think we've seen kind of the opposite dynamic at times with

03:18Michigan, with Ohio State basketball, that, you know, you sort of forget, like, these

03:22are maybe their fan bases that historically are more rooted in one sport than the other.

03:27But number one, their fan bases that know how to be passionate about sports in general.

03:32Number two, you know, most of these Big Ten schools, I saw the stat years ago, and I don't

03:37remember it perfectly, but it's something like 12 of the 15 largest living alumni bases

03:43in the country, the Big Ten, because they're all big state land-grant schools.

03:47So Indiana's in the top 10.

03:49I think Indiana's sixth or seventh.

03:51The point is, there are literally hundreds of thousands of IU fans out there.

03:55So when you see 5,000, 6,000 fans at the Rose Bowl for the UCLA game, when you see probably

04:00more, and I know that stadium is a little funky, but you probably see more IU fans in

04:05that pop-up stadium Northwestern has on the lake up in Evanston than Northwestern fans.

04:11Like you sort of, it reminds you that this is still a huge fan base.

04:15It is a fan base that knows how to be passionate about sports.

04:18And I've said this to people in conversation in the last couple of weeks in particular,

04:23this season is obviously something remarkable.

04:27But Indiana fans have kind of had a decade of building up to this.

04:30They went to one bowl game from 1994 to 2014, and I think they had two or three five-win

04:35seasons in that stretch.

04:38Since 2015, across three different coaching tenures, if we count this as a bowl season,

04:42maybe it's a playoff season, maybe it's both, we'll see.

04:45Indiana's been to five bowl games under three different head coaches with two more five

04:49and seven seasons.

04:50Now, I'm not trying to make Indiana out to be some undervalued program.

04:55I don't know if I'm quite on board with Curt Signetti when he calls it the sleeping giant

04:59or whether the emerging superpower of college football.

05:04But the point is, I mean, Indiana fans have had some good teams to cheer for in the last

05:08ten years.

05:09And this is not necessarily felt like the culmination of that, but maybe a lot of that

05:13learned behavior of six and six, and then eight and four, learning to expect a little

05:19bit more from football, learning to invest a little bit more in football.

05:22And now all of that kind of coming to a head with a season where Indiana gets eight home

05:27games, which means it gets a ton of opportunities for sellouts.

05:30It's going to be the most sellout since either 71 or 72 in a single season.

05:35You've seen a lot of IU fans on the road.

05:36Michigan State was basically just IU fans by the end of that game in Spartan Stadium.

05:44In a weird way, it's almost kind of built up a little bit.

05:47It's just that it took somebody to kind of come and just tear the dam down.

05:50And that's obviously what Curt Signetti's done.

05:54I have so many years invested in Indiana and being there that I actually, I don't remember

06:01ever once, not once, have I ever seen that stadium full.

06:06And there always were seats up in the corners that were empty, always.

06:11It was forever.

06:13And it's amazing to me seeing them play games with a sold out Memorial Stadium.

06:18I can't even believe my own eyes.

06:20How can they go to Columbus?

06:23And I think, frankly, they'll still make the playoff.

06:27Or do you think they will with one loss if they were to lose this game?

06:30Because we believe that if they lose big, they won't be in the playoff.

06:34But if they keep it somewhere under 15 points and show that they can hang with Ohio State

06:41that they're in.

06:42Yeah, I think, I mean, you don't want to create, if you're Indiana, you obviously don't want

06:48to put any kind of seat of doubt in the committee's mind.

06:50And the committee has been pretty, I think it's fair to say the committee's been a believer

06:54in Indiana thus far.

06:56They've kept them steadily in the top eight.

07:00They've been top five the last two weeks.

07:02We've heard Ward Manuel, Michigan AD, who's the committee chair, has even just kind of

07:06said stuff.

07:07He says it diplomatically, obviously, but he said stuff that more or less kind of comes

07:11across as we're maybe not as worried about strength of schedule as is widely perceived,

07:18that we're looking at other metrics like strength of record, things like that.

07:21I did, and I'm just looking over at my desk because I wrote this yesterday, but I pulled

07:26together the 10 times during the 14 playoff era that either a Power Five conference team

07:31or Notre Dame, it happened once with Notre Dame, finished with one loss and didn't make

07:35the playoff.

07:36None of those teams finished lower than seventh in the playoff committee's final rankings.

07:41And obviously, it's a blunt instrument.

07:43It doesn't exactly work this way.

07:45But if those had just been 12 team playoff years, all 10 of those teams would have made

07:51the playoff.

07:52Now, I understand the argument against Indiana from the strength of schedule perspective,

07:56and I understand that there are, you know, there's an extent to which I think, you know,

08:00sometimes college football just has a little bit of difficulty allowing, you know, teams

08:03to kind of come out of nowhere or teams to kind of rise above their station as fast as

08:08Indiana has.

08:09But if you go back and look at some of those teams, you know, you see some strength of

08:12schedules in the 40s and the 50s.

08:14Zach, great stuff.

08:15I love you.

08:16Awesome job.

08:17Enjoy the game Saturday in Columbus, my man.

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