This is not a victory lap. I was not rooting for Indiana, but to root against them is futile.
No, this is instead a response to the assorted “CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED?” reactions to Indiana
winning the national title in football.
My answer to that question is: Yes I can. Why? Three reasons.
(1) I expect the best team in college football to have a good shot at winning the national title
(2) I’ve been paying attention and Indiana has been that team
(3) I dealt with the helmet shock months ago.
What do I mean? Simple: if that Hoosiers team were wearing the colors of any of 16 or so assorted Power 5 schools, you would 100% believe they could win the title and the only shocking thing would be that Miami was in position to throw the game away on the last drive (courtesy of onetime THE AGENDA MVP Carson Beck)
Indiana has been the best team in the country pretty much wire-to-wire and the only reason you didn’t believe it is because they were wearing Indiana colors.
My road to becoming Hoosierpilled started on Saturday the 20th of September when #9 Illinois went to Bloomington to get mutilated. Longtime readers of my work may believe that I am only capable of viewing things through an Illinois-shaped lens, but of them I ask the following:
Do you have any idea how many times I’ve seen Illinois get the living shit kicked out of them by a team that is far superior?
I can authoritatively say that the loss to Indiana was the worst I’ve ever seen Illinois take. Their only points came as a result of huge mistakes by the Hoosiers. Take away the one big Illini mistake and the game is still 56-10. It was worse than losing 63-0 to Iowa because in that game, Illinois kept giving Iowa short fields with turnovers so the yards were actually pretty close. Illinois turned it over once against the Hoosiers and the yards were on the order of around 600 to around 170. Indiana didn’t attempt a pass in the second half, running roughshod to the tune of over 300 rushing yards. If you didn’t watch the game, I can’t communicate to you how thoroughly Illinois was outclassed. It remains the most dramatic ass-kicking I’ve ever seen them take. Nothing about the game was a fluke, and if they played again today Illinois would be lucky to keep it within 53.
In the immediate aftermath, I called for a number of people to be fired and believed I’d seen the end of the Bielema era. The remaining outcomes ranged between 3-9 and 5-7, the coordinators would be fired and we’d have one more shot at a bowl game. But then something silly happened; Illinois knocked off a ranked USC team and then played quality football to move to 5-1 against Purdue and stay in the top 25.
I do believe Indiana was 8 touchdowns better than Illinois in that game, and yet Illinois was deservedly ranked.
#1 Ohio State came to town and that game felt nothing like the Indiana game. Three crucial backbreaking mistakes took Illinois out of a game where they were able to limit the Buckeye rushing attack and move the ball down the field. Until the CFP, Illinois had scored more points against Ohio State than anyone else (16). I came away from that game feeling like the Illini had blown a shot to compete with #1 through a handful of big mistakes and it was a bit of a missed opportunity.
Contrast that with the Indiana game. In SMCD, I even said that from what I saw, Indiana would obliterate Ohio State.
These were not my only data points, but the magnitude of the ass-kicking Indiana delivered Illinois was so great that in order for me to believe Illinois was any good at all (i.e. 9 wins good), it required me to also believe that Indiana was the greatest college football team I’d ever seen firsthand.
Illinois won 9 games. Indiana is the greatest college football team I’ve ever seen firsthand.
I’ve been right about Indiana for over three months and now you finally understand why.
This is now a Big Ten Basketball blog. There’s nothing left for us to discuss in Big Ten Football ever again. Curt Cignetti has mathematically solved the sport.
