The and good evening folks and welcome to bison chat Tuesday, November 26th. I'm Galen Clavio. That's Joe Cronin over there. We got Emily Fox behind the scenes pushing the buttons making the magic happen. We are here to talk about IU football. We're here to talk about the College Football Playoff. A lot to talk about as Indiana coming off their first loss of the season, a disappointing one as they lose in Ohio State, but a lot to look forward to this week as we see the updated CFP
rankings. We got the bucket game this weekend. We're going to talk about that a little bit. Joe, you've been all over the place here lately. You were, I think what up in Green Bay this weekend. So good to have you back. How you doing? I'm good. It's been a lot of travel. I gotta, I'm heading out tomorrow to travel for family, but Columbus, Green Bay and then back to Ohio for for family matters. So it's been good. It's a busy time, I guess. No time to rest, Just go, go, go.
This is how this type of year goes and especially when you have a good football team. This is not absolutely we're not something we're used to as far as Indiana and this time of year, but nice to have that problem as the Hoosiers 10 and one on the season and they suffered their first loss, as I mentioned, as they fall to Ohio State by the score of 38 to 15.
This was one of those games that unfortunately a bunch of things went wrong for Indiana against an opponent that you really couldn't afford to have anything go wrong against. And you know, ultimately, Joe, you, you got to see it same as I did. You were on the sidelines. I think I was up in the stands. But regardless of what your vantage point was, it was just not the game.
Indiana would have liked to have played a lot to look back on and just kind of shake your head at and say, gosh, if this had gone different or that had gone different, maybe it's a different game. But Ohio State also kind of clearly demonstrated that, at least at this point, that's the superior outfit. Yeah, they they, they did flex their muscles a little bit in that one. Obviously you can look at some of those special teams moments and be like, I could have been a closer game.
But really outside of the opening drive that Indiana had and sure, their last drive, they went down and scored. Ohio State had their number and it was the the big presence was on their defensive line, their blitz packages they sent. I mean, Curtis Rourke was on his butt five times. He was getting drilled, got strip sacked on one of them. It just it was tough. The offensive line looked confused. They had to go to a silent
count. That was something that Cignetti talked about both in his post game press conference and then yesterday and and his weekly availability. And it was it was tough. That was something I was really watching for is when Rourke he would he would point and it it was the right guard would be looking back at him and he would signal to Mike Kadik when to snap it.
And I think it was solid. But there were a few moments where they got a delay of game and I think that, you know, when you're having to look at the center rather than forward it, it just messes some of the timing up a little bit. And you could notice that they just they were smart about their blitzes and then, you know, offensively they just couldn't
move the ball. You go back to those two special teams plays, though, it's feel like that five minute stretch, you know, 90 seconds left or however many time there was with James Evan dropping the snap and then the Caleb Downs Parma turn touchdown. It could be. I wouldn't say a different game entirely, but you see that nationally you would have seen a lot closer of the game, I think.
Yeah, it it was one of those games where I think if it if Ohio State's going at full strength to full 40 or full 60 minutes, it it's probably still an Ohio State victory even if Indiana doesn't make the mistakes. We talked about this a little bit on this show, but we talked about it a lot more on the other shows. Like the one concern that you had from Indiana was were they going to be able to handle the environment?
And the silent count was really as big of an indicator as anything of the problems with the environment. It's one of those things where if you're playing in Memorial Stadium, you're not having to deal with that level of noise, so you're able to use snap counts to your advantage. That didn't happen here, and Indiana just look like a sitting duck most of the time. Curtis Rourke just under constant pressure really from the second quarter on.
And you know, there's some things you could go back and look at and maybe second guess in terms of the game plan, you know, do you try to focus on the run more? Do you have a short pass package? But you know, Ohio State brought something to bear that they hadn't brought to bear and the other games that they played this year, which was a really aggressive blitzing package that didn't just rely on their front four.
And look, Indiana wasn't ready for that and they ended up kind of paying the price for it. But all that said, as I think a lot of people have pointed out, Indiana, who didn't play as bad as I think many people have tried to argue that they play the running game was actually really solid. It looked like they didn't have a lot of running yards, but that was because they lost so many running rushing yard numbers due
to the Rourke sacks. And due to that, James Evans dropped punt, which when he fell on it, that counted as like a 23 yard loss. But Tyson Lawton rushed for over 5 yards of carry. Justice Ellison rushed for close to four yards of carry. You know, they would have had a pretty good running game and I think if they'd been able to to stick with it and they hadn't fallen so far behind.
And then, you know, you look at the defense, if you are being charitable and don't want to assign that very last touchdown to the defense and the defense really only allowed seventeen points to be scored by Ohio. You know, a lot of those things added up to where you could take some positives from IU.
And Kurt Signetti was asked about this in his media availability on Monday and kind of pointed out that it wasn't extraordinary issues that Indiana had, but it was really more ordinary issues that led to the loss. Yeah, it offensively, they just really couldn't move the ball once they got that momentum stripped away from them. I think that was one of the more glaring issues. Defensively they played all right.
I think something that I noticed it was outside of the Trayvon Henderson, that 39 yard run when he sat on the one at the end of the game, they would have held them to under 300 yards. Yes, there was a palm return touchdown and a drive set up on the seven, but the defense played pretty solid, especially on the ground. Take out. Again, that 39 yard rush, they were only allowing 4 yards per carry, but that one right there was a big reason why that was
bumped up a little bit. I I will say defensively though, outside of the one interception that Willow Howard had, he was looking very sharp. He was finding these guys. He was what, 22 for 26, a little over 200 yards. Yes, the receiving talent was very good, but guys were also open and they were hitting those corner outs a lot. So I would say the secondary may be something to look at. They weren't getting a ton of pressure on Howard either.
He was able to kind of maneuver the pocket with with relative ease and I think that was something that maybe was a little surprising. I personally thought that Michael Camaro and like James Carpenter, those guys will be able to have more of a disruptive presence in the passing game. They were strong against the run, but the passing game Ohio State was able to kind of pick apart and that's where that's where the weaker side looked from the IU defense. But overall, I I just think they
got outworked. It was one of those like that's a very good Ohio State team. I think they proved that, you know, they have one loss, but it's a one point loss at Oregon. I think yeah, Big 10 championship. I think Ohio State's going to take down Oregon if we're making crazy predictions, but. Let's let's hear from Kurt Signetti on his thoughts right from the Oregon game and what
happened there. There a problem Saturday where assignment errors right like day one protection, certain lineman supposed to go to the left and he doesn't all routine stuff. We didn't do a good job of handling it really well. Obviously the punt team cost us 14 points. You know, it's a 7 seven game with about a minute 40 to go in
the second quarter. We drop the snap and they get the ball in the seven yard line and then we punt the ball for series of the second-half and get 79 yard punt return for a touchdown punt supposed to be kicked to the right and ends up over on on the left number and all of our coverage is going right, ball goes left and we're in a bad spot. So we got to get back In Sync offensively, you know, and get our rhythm back. You know where we're playing
with a lot of confidence. Yeah, getting rhythm back's important. And this is one of the things that Indiana's got to demonstrate in this game coming up against Purdue is rhythm. If you look at what Indiana's done and yes, they've played Ohio State, who's clearly when I said Oregon going into the break, I meant Ohio State, obviously, But you know, they played so they, they played some of the best talent in the country with Oregon with with I said it again with, with Ohio State.
And then of course, a, a very talented defense in Michigan over the last six quarters, Indiana's only scored 18 points. And and that's got to change. And a lot of it is look like rhythm. The passing game especially has been way out of rhythm. The running game has not been able to get involved in a way that is meaningful for Indiana in those six quarters essentially, except for that first drive, I would argue, in the the Ohio State game.
So, you know, Kurt Stignetti, I think I remember hearing him talk a little bit earlier in the year about how he deals with his team. And you know, one of the things that is important in this process is how you deal with your team after a loss like this. It's really about rebuilding confidence, reminding guys of what they did well and trying to figure out like, how do you put them in a position where they can do it well moving forward? And that's going to be very important for Indiana.
The season's not over. They're still in very good shape. We think we'll find out for sure here in in 1015 minutes or so as far as the College Football
Playoffs concerned. But they're going to have to have a resounding performance against Purdue, and going in and yelling at your players or talking about how that was a terrible performance isn't going to help get Indiana to the point where they can mentally and emotionally go in and play a good game against Purdue. Yeah, and I think I think what Signetti did, especially on Saturday was take a lot of accountability in like crediting Ohio State.
And just like they outworked them and had the talent outplayed them really throughout the game outside of that first drive really. But something that I also really appreciated is how he he harped on those high moments like that first drive, like the last drive and said, those are things that
you can look at and build from. Because that last drive almost seemed like pure strategy to take as much time off the clock, get that touchdown to keep it within 2 scores and like, you know, keep yourself from this loss looking like a three score loss. Obviously Trayvon Henderson had a different thing to say on his first carry of the of the next possession after the onside kick.
But overall, it's just I, I, I don't think this team lacks confidence after a loss because I think they've all been through so much. Some of these guys from JMU, they were that undefeated team had a loss still one games afterwards. And then the guys at IU, they have also like not seen success like this. So they're confident in their ability.
They've know what they've been able to do for the previous 10 weeks or 9 1/2 if you don't want to totally include that second-half versus Michigan. But like you said, I think some of these structural things offensively definitely need to be adjusted. And I mean, not to not to be be too down on a team, but there is a team that kind of get right, get your office back and sync Purdue A1 in 10 team is not the worst opportunity to kind of get some things back in rhythm.
See, you know, get the get the passing game back In Sync. Elijah Serrat, him and he's had some had some drops in these past couple weeks, which, you know, after the midway point of the year was calling himself Mr. Waffle House always open. I mean, I I'm not going to lie, he's open a lot of the time. It just some of the times doesn't break out.
But yeah. Well, and and it was less of an issue, a little bit of an issue in the Ohio State game, but it I mean, Indiana just had trouble getting the ball to people in general. But as you mentioned, like you're playing Purdue and you could be of two minds on this. I mean, on the one hand, Purdue would love to ruin Indiana's season. Indiana has had some tough times here, and they need to figure out a way to execute.
And it's one of those things where you always worry that a team might get overconfident because Purdue has been bad. Like historically bad. Like, this is one of the worst, if not the worst Purdue team since World War 2 in terms of statistics. But it's, you know, you also then sometimes worry about underrating your opponent. And we've seen like Purdue doesn't, they're not absent a pulse entirely. They almost beat Illinois at Illinois. They they've played a couple of
other teams relatively close. They were in that game at East Lansing over the weekend, taking on Michigan State couldn't get the job done. But on the flip side, I think it's important to remember it's going to be cold and we're going to talk about the weather in a minute. And Purdue has had a season from hell.
They're one and 10. They're probably not going to be that motivated to go stand out in in sub freezing temperatures for three hours and compete hard against an Indiana team that has to know they got to go in and play at their apex to impress the committee and put themselves like even more solidly into the College Football Playoff. We've got some sound from Kurt Signetti as he evaluates Purdue. Let's hear what he had to say
about them. Quarterbacks are very talented guys, got armed talent and and really good escape ability. Tight end is a weapon with 46 catches and 1 receiver. 7 is a very explosive player and they got a speed guy too. And then they got some guys that make good contested catches. I've always thought the running back was good. They're a capable team and they're not having the kind of season they wanted to have obviously.
But they're also team scored 40 points in the second-half against the Illinois to come back from a 27 three deficit and send the game to overtime. So at this level, everybody's capable. And you'd expect him to say that and he's right. I mean, you know, it's and and we we saw this week, you know, Alabama with their College Football Playoff destiny on the line, losing to an Oklahoma team that's had a terrible season so far. You know, Ole Miss College Football Playoff life on the
line. They go in, they lose Florida. Florida, of course, has played better lately, but still, you would expect Ole Miss to be able to go in and win that one. You know, we've watched BYU disintegrate with some games over the course last couple of weeks. We saw Colorado lose to a team with a losing record. I mean, there's a lot of things that none of those teams are as bad as Purdue is bad. But I think it's going to be interesting to watch how Indiana handles this.
And you know, Joe, I don't know what your thoughts are in terms of like what Indiana needs to do, but it's just going to be interesting watching them deal with these conditions because as I mentioned, it's going to be cold. You're probably not going to have the same crowd that you've gotten used to just by the fact that it's really cold and you're not going to have all of the students back.
So it's been, it could be kind of an odd atmosphere and you just hope Indiana can figure out a way to play at a level that overcomes that and and doesn't let it affect them. I actually think the crowd will be solid. I'm not sure if it'll totally be sell out, but because of everything that's on the line with it and once again, like we've talked about really the entirety of every episode we've had is this is an unprecedented year for Indiana football.
People are buying in, people are investing and they want to see what this team can do. And especially the fact that this could be the last time a lot of everyone sees A-Team like this. And also a lot of these players because some of these guys are so old and, and like that makes so much of this team. But as far as like, I think they
know what to play for. And I got to sit down with Mike Kadic a few weeks ago and I asked him about Purdue because in his time about you as a as a starter, he has never beat Purdue. When he redshirted in back in 19 was the lone time that IUS beat Purdue and the last time that IUS beat Purdue and he had he was like clenching, he was breaking his knuckles, like clenching his jaw when talking about Purdue. And he even said like, there aren't words to describe how I feel about them.
So it it's something like that. One of the leaders, one of the three captains of this team, one of the veterans of this team that trickles down. And someone asked Signetti about like, obviously Purdue is, is a rivalry game, but a lot of these guys aren't used to that. And he, he gave a very blunt answer. He's like, these guys know what a rivalry game is and they know what this game means, what is at
stake. I think they have all of the motivation to go out and play like they did in the 1st 9 1/2 weeks of the season. And it just, that's really where it comes down to his motivation. They have a talent, they have the capability and like you said, with the weather, this game's going to rely a lot on the ground and the ground game for IU has been tremendous this season.
The the line has been so good as far as creating holes, getting to that second level and then the two running backs have been great. So I I think they're going to put up some damage. This could be a 200 yard game on the ground combined from Ellison Lot and then seeing who else is in the mix. Let's talk about the weather conditions that we're looking at in this game.
You know, it is, it is one of those things where you you see a forecast early sometimes and you think to the self, well, you know, maybe it won't actually be that way. And it's actually, I don't want to say it's gotten worse, but it certainly hasn't gotten any warmer. So, you know, as we, as we call things up, I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here because I, I think it's worth checking this out. Look at the AccuWeather
forecast. So during the day it's 31 with eight mile an hour winds gusting to 14. You got a 12% chance of snow and a wind chill of 26 going on throughout the course of of the day. But then you you get to the the evening and it drops to 20. West wind today wind gusts to 12, still a chance of some precipitation and a real feel. That's the wind chill, folks of 14° and I'm gonna be fascinated to see how the crowd reacts to
this. As much as there's been a renaissance, or maybe not a renaissance, a renaissance involves that at one point implies at one point there were football fans that were really excited about being football fans, like all the new football fans for IU. This is the acid test. You're gonna go out and stand in 17° weather and watch this team play. It's, I hope so because this team absolutely deserves the
support. But I do worry a little bit like if you go to StubHub tickets for this game, we're going at around $200 last week. The get in price as of 30 minutes ago is $50.00 including fees to get into the game. So it seems like a lot of people are potentially bailing and I am just kind of curious to see what we end up with in Memorial Stadium on Saturday night. It's a shame too because the first ever night bucket game that was confirmed by sports information. That's a real cool scene, the
bucket game under the lights. It's on national TV. I'll be at FS1. It'd be great to have a big crowd there. I'm just curious to see if if people will actually venture out for it.
I think it's tough because with, with students, especially like you never know who's going to be back because I mean, especially for people that are out of state, you don't know what kind of plans they have to make, what, what kind of accommodations they have to make, whether they have their own car, whether they have to fly. I'm lucky that I live in Indiana and have my own car. So I'll be there, but I'm not a student that's going to be in the student section. I'm going to be on the field.
So that's that's completely irrelevant to the point you're making. Credentials, everybody. He'd like you to know that, OK? But I I'm not sure, I haven't really asked around about how many people are planning on coming back. I, I, I was going to ask you, are you surprised that this game's at 7? Obviously it's cool for the history in the scene. It's, you know, the final game. But of all the games that IU could have gotten this late slate, like, you know, three
days ago, right? Why why is this one? Why is this one the one that's under the lights? It's because Indiana's 10 and one and is still technically alive for a Big 10 championship game berth that that's why, you know, yeah, Penn State and Ohio State both lose and Indiana wins. Then Indiana's going to the Big 10 title game. Now, I don't think that's going
to happen. But look, the networks generally, they'll go through and they will pick games based upon what's going to make the most sense for them in terms of potential ratings and in terms of which games matter the most. And you know, the first draft pick for this week is always Michigan, Ohio State, that's on Fox at Big Noon. And you know, you've got CBS that decided it was going to take Notre Dame, USC. So that's a 330 game.
You've got, you know, the other the other night game that's being played in this one is Washington and Oregon. That's a big game. It's going to draw a big crowd. But the rest of them, it's like, I mean, look, just look at the games that are out there. Penn State, Maryland won't really draw anything massive and it's and then with, like you said, with everything on the line.
It is a weird, it's also kind of a weird week because you also have games on Friday. So you know, you've got Minnesota, Wisconsin playing at noon on CBS on Friday. That could have been a 7:00 PM Saturday cake if that had not been the day before. And you've also got Nebraska, Iowa, which would be another relatively big game, Couple of really big fan bases there. That's at 7:30 on Friday.
So I think, you know, the way that the slots worked out, it made sense that I think if Indiana had beaten Ohio State, I think Indiana's probably the 330 game. But because that didn't happen, obviously you move it to 7:00. So that's that's why it is interesting. But ultimately, Indiana, 9 million people watch that Indiana or Ohio State game, which is pretty wild to think about. You know, Indiana's a
recognizable thing. They're they're, again, they're likely to be in the College Football Playoff and that is going to draw some audience. And I think that's a good thing for Indiana. Absolutely. And I think that right now, like you said, they've earned this kind of respect to to generate this audience, generate the fans being there. But you know, 20°, the wind chill, it's going to be tough to have them in the stadium.
And I don't want to make any for dishes because I could say that there's not going to it's going to be underwhelming. And all of a sudden that's 53,000 strong that are just drunk and cold. But hey, who? Who do I know? Well, we'll see. I mean, look, it'd be great if I, I do hope students come back. I think it would be great to have the students back in the building for this one. And I just hope alums can, you know, find a way to to get in there and and make some noise.
It's a team that deserves that level of support. It is going to be some kind of some tough conditions. But look, it's one of the, I mean, we've had games like this before. Generally speaking, people haven't shown up. I'm hoping that it'll be different this time, but it's tough in any environment. I mean, when we see those big night crowds at Penn State or Michigan State, generally not at Michigan or Ohio State, 'cause they refuse to play night games, it's, it's not 17°, it's like
40°. There's a big difference between those two temperatures. I'll be out there, you know, and I'm looking forward to it, but I'm like, I'm also really trying to game plan like how I'm going to handle the climate. It's, and I think you should be doing the same. I I don't want frostbite amongst IU sports media figures on the sideline, so I'm going. To I I got I got some big cabin socks, big gloves big. Coat. Get a. Big 10. Get a ski mask. I do have a ski mask, should I
go pull a balaclava? And I think you should I at this point, you don't want to have your skin exposed like that for long periods of time. So that's true. That might be that. That might be the best idea, but. You, but you're in charge of everybody else among IU sports media on the sideline. You have to go make sure that they're all dressing properly. That's some that's some high stakes right there. Well, I'm shooting my own video. Come on now.
We're multitask down there. That's right, yeah. Students take it stabs the students with some crazy work right there. Especially when they live. With especially 11, that's your roommate. We are standing by as we're supposed to be doing. Are you shocked that the game's still going on? Shocked that? The game's still going on. Memphis and Michigan State are playing right now.
And of course, we have this situation where ESPN decides that college basketball games are going to last two hours, which they never last two hours, especially when the previous game didn't end in a timely manner. So we're just waiting for Memphis to, I think, finally finish off Michigan State. There'll probably be 9000 fouls in this thing. I did want to go ahead while we're waiting and talk through perhaps what I think the College Football Playoff committee is going to do.
And, you know, we, we might as well talk a little bit about this and, and talk through some of the scenarios. Because ultimately what's going to be fascinating about all of this is how does the committee decide they're going to go about handling all of the chaos that happened this past week? There was a ton of it, Joe. We talked about a lot of it at
the start of the show. Indiana, to some degree, kind of got lucky in that they lost early and they lost to a team that was ranked second in the country on their home field. And you look at a lot of their competition, We mentioned some of them at the start of the show, Alabama, Ole Miss, you know, BYU, Colorado Army was they were kind of on a fringe, but these were all teams with the exception of Army that lost
to inferior competition. And I think to some degree as much as people perhaps at the end of the Ohio State game might have been tempted to say, oh, that disqualifies Indiana from the college football play off. Everything that happened after that basically said, well, no, actually not because a now Indiana's strength of schedule is basically twice as good as it was before. It jumped from like 104th to
52nd. And the teams that they're in competition with forbids all lost or the most of them lost at least, So that that was probably in a bad situation for Indiana, the best possible outcome. Yeah, and I will say kind of like with the the inaugural rankings of this season, something that Reece Davis said is how the rankings are going to be pretty similar to the AP poll rankings. And if you go to what the AP poll is currently, it's really I, I, I think it's going to allow IU to be.
And obviously they're going to drop because of the loss. But I, I, I imagine the AP poll and the cloud Football Playoff will be relatively consistent because that's what it's been for the past couple weeks. And they've done a solid job. They've kind of stuck to that. They have obviously, like we've talked about honored teams that win and punish teams that lose. They're gonna punish Indiana, but they're also gonna punish these now three loss SEC teams. I'm not sure how much, but they
will get punished. Yeah, it's, it's gonna be interesting because and I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna call up my rankings here. I'm trying to do something special with the ticker and we'll see if I can get the ticker to work. All right, Well, maybe I can just do all this as a banner. OK, so that's not terribly readable. Maybe we can scroll that instead. Nope, it's not going to scroll.
So if you can, you know what, let me let me edit that a little bit just so it's a little bit easier to read. Keep talking Joe, while I do some some some on the fly graphic stuff here. Well, I will say it looks like from what your prediction is from what's been chattered around the national media that with a win against Purdue, I you should be pretty much locked in. The only thing is, is what the the championship games are going to are going to entail.
Just with all the chaos that can still ensue. Like with Texas A&M, Texas playing this week in the Lone Star showdown. I think that winner goes to the SEC championship. And like what if Texas A&M makes the SEC championship against Georgia and then now Georgia's a three loss team does a three loss SEC like you're in the championship game. What what's the wager right there? So I don't know it just. Well, so let's. Talk so much. There's so much still at stake. So here we go.
So here's what I was trying to do. So if you look at this, basically this is my projections. So the way to interpret this, the first number is the number that I think the teams will be in the ranking. The second number is the seed, keeping in mind the auto bids. So I anticipate the committee is going to have Oregon first. Still, there's no reason why they would drop them. Ohio State second, Texas third,
Penn State 4th. Notre Dame 5th, Miami 6th, which I I don't think Miami should be ahead of Indiana. I'm just going to say that right now there's no argument for Miami to be ahead of Indiana, but I just had a sneaking suspicion they'll end up there. Georgia 7th, Indiana 8th, Tennessee 9th, Boise State 10th, SMU 11th, Clemson 12th. But out of the playoff, Bama 13th, SC 14th, Arizona State
15th with the last auto bid. And So what that would set up would essentially be Oregon is the one seed, Texas is the two seed. Miami is the three seed. Boise State is the 4. Ohio State is the 5. Penn State is the 6th. Notre Dame is the seven. Georgia is the 8th. Indiana as the 9. Tennessee is the 10 and SMU is the 11 and then Arizona State as the 12. So in this scenario. IU in Athens. This would be IU going to Athens, which is here's. The.
Here's the thing I'll say. The atmosphere there. I I hesitate with getting too much into any of the projected rankings because if I'm. Talking hypothetical, though. If Georgia does what you expect, which is wins against Georgia Tech. Right. And then beats either Texas or Texas A&M in the SEC championship game. Georgia would be the two seed at that point. And so you would not if you were
Indiana be going there. You might instead be going to Athens or Texas, having lost in the SEC Championship game and and still not. That would probably that would probably be switching them right there. Right. You know, so there's a lot of things. And this is where it's important to keep in mind. Like right now, Oregon's won and Ohio State is five in terms of seeding. But as you said earlier, I would expect Ohio State to beat Oregon
on a neutral field. You know, it's it's a neutral field, but there's going to be a ton of Ohio State fans in Lucas, Oregon. And so I would expect Ohio State to win that game, which would make them the one seed and would drop Oregon to five. Yeah. You know, Penn State is probably locked in. You know, Penn State's probably not going to jump Oregon, I'm guessing at this point. Notre Dame. This is a situation where how does Notre Dame fare against USCUSC? Finally looks like they have a
bit of a pulse. They they go and come from behind and they beat UCLA. They don't look like they're in the same ballpark as Notre Dame, but Notre Dame's got to go to the Coliseum and play USC in LA, so anything's possible. Miami right now they're the three seed, but they got to beat Syracuse this weekend and then they're going to have to play SMU most likely in the ACC Championship in wool if SMU wins
that game. SMU is the three seed, not Miami. And so this is where I would be cautious about getting too far mentally or emotionally down the pathway of any of the current projections that you'll see tonight or anything that you're seeing here.
Because ultimately, there's so much that will change here, not just this weekend, but also conference championship weekend that will materially affect the seating and where everybody's at. And keep in mind, like across the board here, like George's got to play Georgia Tech. They'll probably win that. But that's It's not inconceivable, given how inconsistent George's played and given the fact that Georgia Tech's already knocked off Miami, that they could spring an upset there.
Galen, did you just watch like The Princess Bride? You've used Inconceivable a few times. No, I'm a big fan of the word. I've never seen that movie. I've seen clips from that movie. Well you have you have homework to do once once the the chats done. Those those of you in in the YouTube chat can't see this, but the look on Emily Fox's face when I said I hadn't seen Princess Bride gave me all kinds of life that I didn't know that I had. That's tremendous.
Yeah. It's one of those weird quirks. I've never, I've seen clips from the movie. Certainly I've never actually watched the thing all the way through. Not particularly upset about that either. OK, I remember. Come on now. Yeah, I dated a girl in college who had the exact same perspective I did, which was like, she had seen it and she's like, it was really not very good. It was terribly overrated.
And so I was like, that's fine. I'm not, I'm not going to watch it and I've I've stuck with that for 25 years. Looking at at some of the other items, Josh Bowles apparently has not seen Princess Bride either. Thank you, Josh. I'm glad I'm not the only one, but a couple of other ones. Tennessee still has to go to Vanderbilt and and I wouldn't. Spoiled some seasons. And and Vanderbilt, that is going to be their Super Bowl. If they could knocked, imagine beating Tennessee.
Knock them. Out of the call, Triple playoff. You know, Boise State is probably in good shape as long as they can beat UNLV. You know, the big interesting questions here are with some of these other matchups. So Nick Barna asked, do we want Texas or A&M to win Saturday? There's actually two schools of thought I would argue here.
School. Well, OK, so school of thought A says Texas that you just want to knock A&M completely out of the picture and that I would I would argue A&M's already knocked out of the picture. So, you know, but so the idea is, well, do you want Texas to win? So then they're in a position where they're going to be taking on Georgia in the SEC championship game. I would argue that the you know, it'd be it'd be interesting if
Texas lost that game. I don't think I think Texas still is in the playoffs, though. Well, but maybe not well, OK, they may be in the that's a. Big. That's a big punish.
Hold on. They they may be in the playoff, but they might be behind Indiana because if you think about it, that Texas team at that point, if they lose that game is 10 and 2. They, they would have one more loss than Indiana and their best win would be a three-point win on the road against Vanderbilt, unless I, I guess you could theoretically say, oh, the Oklahoma win is their best win. Now, I'm not sure if that would actually qualify, given that Oklahoma has had a very good season.
They were ranked at the time that they played them. I, I think it would, there's an, there's an argument to be made if, if Indiana blows out Purdue and Texas loses to A&M and then A&M goes in and loses to Georgia, A&M will be done anyway. But it might knock an SEC team like Texas down in the pecking order somewhat compared to where Indiana's at. The safest bet is probably what
you just said. But but part of this here, Joe, if you're an Indiana fan, is you want to host, you you want to you want to have an SEC team have to come here on the 20th or 21st and play. Yeah. And, you know, I think a, a Texas loss here and then an A&M loss to Georgia, which would be very likely in the SEC championship game, is a more sure route to Indiana being a team that could host because they might potentially move ahead of Texas in the pecking order.
But you do run the risk if that is the scenario of A&M pulling the shocker and knocking off Georgia. And that could lead to an extra SEC team and players. So there's a lot of game theory here. The big one that I'm kind of looking at this weekend is the Clemson SC game because either of those teams winning, that is a big win, especially if they're up there, you know, 1214 in that range. That's a big win. Clemson with some help, could be playing in the ACC championship
game. And if I think if Clemson beat South Carolina, it's going to be hard like depending that one of these other teams doesn't lose, it's going to be kind of hard to leave them out. So I don't think they'll, I don't think they'll Bunny hop Indiana. I think that's that's hard to do right there. But. I don't know. They're they're fringe. They're fringe to get in.
Here's the thing, a lot of the, a lot of the propaganda around South Carolina is just unintelligible BS being spewed by all of these SEC burner accounts and by their, their cronies in the media. I, I, I don't fundamentally understand the love for South Carolina given what they've done
so far this year. You know, we talked about this on the Crimson Cast Recap Show on Sunday, but if you look at who they've beaten, they've, they've got home wins against Texas A&M and then they've got a four point win at home versus Missouri. If they beat Clemson, that's great. They'd still have 3 losses and they're, you know, that would be their best win.
I, I, I have a hard time seeing a team whose best wins are Texas A&M, Missouri, and Clemson. You know, justifying getting in with three losses when your losses on the season were to LSU, Mississippi and Alabama. And the Mississippi loss was not particularly close. You know, Clemson probably has a worst case. You know, Clemson, what is their best win, Joe? I, I'd, I, I would invite you to go look at their schedule and tell me what their best win is.
Is it, is it Pitt? Is it, I mean, it was South Carolina. If they beat South Carolina, that would become their best win. But that would. Oh wow, right touché touché. But but you know, it's interesting. It's like people like, oh, they beat they beat South Carolina. They should be considered in and it's like they would have a win over a four loss South Carolina team at that point. Like how how is that a qualifying victory? So these are the things that I that keep me up at night that I
think about. I don't know exactly what the the committee decides to do in that circumstance. How much fun do you think the committee has having to, you know, debate debacle through all of this? I don't know. They may have some fun. They probably, who knows. It's hard to say how the committee evaluates this stuff. I will say I think the committee's greatest joy is probably hearing people complain about the things that they did after the fact.
Absolutely right. But The thing is, is, would the would the, the the modern Joe Schmo have any a clue of who to put 12 teams in? I just don't think so. I well. No. I don't know. I don't know if there's a perfect way to do it. That's there's someone's gonna be mad at the end of the day. Yeah, there's, there's not a perfect way to do it. A lot of it really comes down
there. There's a subjective element and as much as committees generally stink in any walk of life, the reason you do it is that so you can try to arrive at some degree of consensus. You know, with Indiana, the big thing. And, and this was brought up by Tanis in the chat, like I'd be if the if the committee decides they're going to punish Indiana too much for losing at the number two team in the country. I've got some questions.
That's true. You know, and again, it's like, what is the distinguishing figure with Penn State schedule that makes them better than Indiana? Penn State already lost at home to Ohio State. They didn't, you know, they're they're what, 5th or whatever it is in the College Football Playoff rankings. And so I, I think there's got to be some kind of an accounting about how the committee is looking at some of these teams. Miami is another one where Miami lost.
They dropped some. They didn't drop a tremendous amount. BYU did drop quite a bit. But again, BYU wasn't that good of a team. The statistics said they weren't that good of a team. They, they got a lot of wins in the closing minutes. You know, they kind of skated by. They were not very highly rated in, in S&P Plus. And then they turned around and lost again. So I think that that was more of them finding their level than it was the committee punishing them.
But so it's going to be a really interesting question mark as we get to the, you know, I, my, my hope is that we don't see a situation where the committee does what the pollsters did, which was the overreactionary and decide that they're going to rank both Miami and SMU above Indiana despite their resumes not justifying it and move Tennessee up ahead of Indiana, despite Tennessee beating UTEP over the week. Like I, I still have questions like this is where the polls
just don't make a lot of sense. So you go, you lose at the number two team in the country, Another team beats a team that doesn't have a pulse and you're going to move them over that team. It it just doesn't really compute as far as I'm concerned. The big thing they just the the what I've noticed the committee just doesn't like seeing losses. And when it happens, it's just like this glaring alarm.
And I, I think the fact that Penn State lost to Ohio State, like, and was it right before the 1st rankings or, or like a week before or something like that. So by the time the rankings come out, it's like, oh, the loss was to Ohio State. But now that the rankings are happening consistently, it's like they see this loss and it's like, Oh my gosh, it doesn't matter who almost. And the whole strength of schedule too.
Like now that IU has a stronger strength of schedule than Miami and SMU and also Oregon. So it's like you, you have to toss that argument out the window now because if you still use it, you got to now use it for SMU in Miami, which that hasn't been the case. Yeah, exactly. So let's we're we're we're just go ESPN, their graphics department demanded that, you know, they get to show all of the pretty things that they design.
So we're right now on the show, they're going through that process, they're explaining the buys and whatnot, and we've got the the playoff rankings from last week up obviously, that we're going to be keeping an eye on. So last week, 25 through 20 was Illinois, UNLV, Mizzou, Iowa State, Arizona State and Tulane. And we'll see what it looks like this time around as they're still running through graphics.
It's like guys maybe dump out of the package as opposed to, you know, just just hitting the button like everything's normal. They're still showing graphics here. I'm getting annoyed by this, Joe, frankly, we we're still showing graphics. The it's going to be interesting, I think next week more than anything else. You know, that's the ranking that that really ends up being the one that that sets everything going into that
championship weekend. And and as we think about where Indiana's at, This is why this Purdue game coming up this week is is really, really important in terms of style points. OK, so we've got. Colorado. Colorado 25th, they dropped from 16th to 25th and that's not surprising. I'm a little surprised they're still in the top 25. We get Kansas State back in, so that's I guess not too surprising as well. They're kind of hovering around at 8:00 and.
Three, here's a Big 10 team. Yeah, Illinois at 23rd. Illinois, of course, needed a last second pass to beat Rutgers over the weekend. They I was almost, I was almost right in. That is like, why is Illinois going to lose that game? They almost did UNLVA little bit of a surprise here. They were 24th last week. They are now 22nd. They move up a couple of spots.
That also with Boise State playing them, that now can solidify Boise State getting that top 4 getting that by if they win against UNLV pretty much. And then the the committee's I'll fated romance with Missouri continues unabated up to 21st in the poll despite no no clear sense as to why Texas A&M drops from 15th to 20th. So they dropped five whole spots based upon that loss that they suffered this past weekend. Obviously some conversation
being had around this Texas A&M. That that's the crazy thing. If Tex A&M beats Texas and then somehow manages to beat Georgia in the SEC championship game and now it's chaos. Now that's now that's a three loss Georgia team, Tex A&M with the auto bid. Well, and what what is happening there? And A&M at that point is probably 13th or 14th. That could be a situation where
the SEC champ doesn't get a buy. Yeah, you know, that's well, let's let's put that a pin in that for a second. I we'll. We'll we'll wait to see what. I straight up four spots to 18th. Tulane up three spots. So they go from 20th to 17th Tulane hovering around. I mean, they're gonna get a chance to play Army in the AAC champion. They could if Boise. State loses. That's that's your next stop for Group of Five.
And then there's Arizona State. What a story them and Indiana both picked up, You know, bottom of bottom of the barrel and just the turn around. It's been, it's been remarkable. We're. Starting to see teams that I had had thought we would see I, I thought they would have Arizona State 15th. So Arizona State, who's going to be the top rated Big 12 team, 16th in the rankings? South Carolina, 15th. And.
Which means this is interesting. So now I'm wondering what they did with the order from this point forward. So I had South Carolina projected to be 14th. They end up being 15th. They jump up three spots here. More conversation being had here, Ole. Miss. So Ole Miss is, I don't know, that's interesting. Ole Miss at 14th. That's actually bad news for South Carolina, I would argue.
Yeah, that's. The fact that Ole Miss loses that game and still stays ahead of South Carolina, I think that I think Joe, the committee agrees with me that South Carolina's resume is kind of trashy. That's fair. It's not great. I'll let you. I, I, I hadn't noticed it until you you brought it up so. That's what I'm here for. I'll bite the bold on that one. There it is. Alabama drops 6 spots. I I mean, again, it's like, no question, Alabama's got why? Are we?
Why are we showing Alabama highlights? Because we had to. I think the ESPN is contractually obligated to show Alabama highlights. Like if someone were to sneeze on ESP NS Air and the sound came out and it sounded even vaguely like Alabama. Roll Tide or. Something Roll Tide. You'd have to show highlights of Alabama. They they scored what, three points against Oklahoma and they're showing Alabama, Georgia highlights Yes, that's.
So. I guess make it make sense is what I'm getting at. I get the whole contract and whatever. But yeah, so I'm guessing Clemson is gonna be at 12. Clemson at 12. Let's see if. Let's see if that's actually. Is that what you predicted? I had Clemson at 12 and there they are. So, so this is interesting. Again, I, I, I think that Clemson is overrated there, but the fact that they ranked Clemson there doesn't surprise
me too much. Largely I think because Clemson has two losses, it does put Clemson in a position where they will benefit if they beat South Carolina. It actually put South Carolina in a position where they'll benefit more if they beat Clemson. So this is something I think to keep in mind and and keep an eye on. And now I think the big question is where like what is this 11th team? I will say with the Clemson, SC, it's going to be hard.
They're going to need some help on the outside to try and get these other teams in. So now we wait to see who pops up at 11th. And this is, I think if Indiana doesn't pop up here, you can start to feel good. I think it's and it's Boise State at all. So yeah, Indiana should feel good. That means that Indiana is above Boise State. And yes, as Joe has pointed out, they are in.
And you know, this is where the seeding thing becomes really interesting because the seeding aspect comes down to, you know, what are your top 4 conference champions? So Boise State, there is the fourth team and that. A fun team to watch. Ashton Gentie is unreal. Yeah, they are very fun. You know, they and they obviously played Oregon very well earlier on in the season. Well, someone might be a little bit of ahead of us in the comments. I I think I'm not sure that no,
I think they're not ahead. Wow, Indiana does drop all the way to 10th. Well, that's. That's similar. Like I said, the AP poll, it's been pretty mirrored the entire time. Well, that's, that's not ideal for Indiana. And, and I would actually argue that's, that's a pretty big penalty for Indiana, especially with SMU ahead of them.
So that's, again, I, I, on the one hand, it's helpful because either SMU or Miami is guaranteed to lose at least one more game and that will probably drop Indiana under or excuse me, or drop them under Indiana, whichever of those teams, you know. But this is where you do have to be a little bit concerned now if you're Indiana, because if Clemson beat South Carolina, is the committee setting it up where they would move Clemson ahead of Indiana in the pecking
order? But then like again, just back to the whole like resume and stuff. I guess that's the ranked win the SO. So now Tennessee at 8th and. Big win against Utah. Yeah, and Tennessee in the last poll. So Tennessee goes up three spots again. I, I don't, I don't really understand the metrics being used at this point by the committee when it comes to who they're ranking and why 'cause I, I again, I'm not. If it's strength of schedule, Indiana should be ahead of SMU.
If it's losses, Indiana should be ahead of Tennessee. There's Georgia, and so we can kind of more or less guess what the rest of the rankings are going to be here with Miami in 6th and then Northern Penn. State, Texas, Ohio State and Oregon so. So we'll wait for the remaining the remaining list here. I guess it's just back. That'll be interesting. So is this setting up for Indiana to be the 11? I think it'd be Indiana would be the 11 in this in this setup, Yeah, because there's Miami.
Oh, that's right. So Miami would be the three and then as we game this out. So Boise State at the four, Miami at the three. Texas at the two I set. The two Oregon at the one, Ohio State at the five, Penn State at the six. Yep. So that would be in Indiana, Penn State, if what we're thinking is correct. I think that's correct. No, no, it wouldn't be. Or no? Is Indiana gonna be 10? Hold on a second, I'm doing the math real quick. I. Thought I'd just do it in my head here, no?
No, no, I got it. I got it here. So Indiana would be the 10 and I think they would play Georgia.
And that is, yeah. So basically, I think what we've got now is Oregon is the one, Texas is the two, Miami is the three, Boise State is the 4, Ohio State is the 5, Notre Dame is the six, Georgia is the 7, Tennessee is the 8, SMU is the 9, Indiana is the 10, Clemson is the 11, and then Arizona State is the 12. Yeah, that's exactly how it's shaping up so, well, obviously you'd like to see Indiana move
higher. The nice thing is, as long as Indiana handles business against Purdue, they will move probably at least one spot higher and maybe more than one spot higher. I will say this about what what's setting up right now is the Big 10 runner up likely, unless if Ohio State gets bounced back a little further. But if Oregon loses and is at the five, their path is going to be the Big 12 championship. And then if they beat win that they play Boise State.
Just showing kind of what that path is for what the what the projected five seed would be in this in this instance. Yeah, but in this one, Indiana's the last at large, so to speak. And so that's going to be an interesting one for Indiana to to deal with. And someone pointed out I did, I did. I didn't miss Penn State in that process. So this would put Indiana against Penn State in what would be the 611 match up. It's a nice match up for Indiana.
There are worse. There are worse teams to play in this mess than Penn State. But you do worry a little bit about the the way that this. Rematch. Interesting. Yeah, they got a. Rematch right there with Tennessee, Georgia. You worry a little bit about how this this plays out for Indiana, though, because you've got Clemson lurking outside who's going to get a chance at a a potentially bigger victory than
Indiana will. Or you have South Carolina potentially getting a victory over the team that's the first team out. Would that be enough to move them ahead of Indiana? It's hard to that's. Again, that's that's again that three loss team. Exactly. You can't you can't have a three loss team in, especially if they're 11 and 1. I feel like that's criminal to leave out, especially with everything that happened last season with Florida State. Yeah. I mean, well, yeah.
That just right there should be the end of the discussion. Yeah, well, I mean again though as I'll as I'll note. Because Penn State is is 10 and one and right now is 6. As as I'll note, you know, I think you know, the thing that Indiana's going to going to hopefully benefit from is Miami and SMU are going to play each other.
Miami is 3 spots ahead of SMU. If Miami beats SMU in the ACC Championship game, or either way really, you would think that Indiana would move ahead of whoever loses that game. That's that's what the word's going to be interesting. I don't know how much weight they're going to put on the loss of the championship game. That's. That's the biggest thing. They've got to, but they've got
to weight it to some degree. And there will be weight, but like compared to a regular season loss, no, it's that extra, it's that 13th game rather than I don't know. Yeah, no, it's it's, it's certainly a possibility. You know, the other thing, obviously, as we talked about this is where you got to become big Vanderbilt fans this weekend. You know, you, you want, you want Tennessee to pick up another loss.
There aren't, there aren't a lot of other teams up in this mix that you know, other than other than Texas, which is, we said like if Texas loses, the fact that they're still third, I, I still don't fundamentally understand the thought process they're given who their, you know, their whole resume has been against. I mean, look at who their best wins are. Their being third with that resume is is a a bit of a head scratcher.
I think at the time when they played Michigan, they were ranked too so. Now, I mean who? That's the thing. It doesn't really. Who? Cares at that point, same Michigan team that IU beat. It's, it's an interesting, well, not even interesting. It's just, I don't know, it's
college football. So you look a a lot left to go and that and then the other one, of course, and, and the one I think that everybody should be rooting for more than anything else is USC and Notre Dame. You want USC to win that game now, I think you've got a clear rationale for wanting Notre Dame to lose that game. And so that's something everybody should be thinking about as we move forward.
But yeah, the the big question Mark's gonna be that, you know, what happens with that South Carolina Clemson game now? And does that harm Indiana? Indiana's going to need to, I think, beat Purdue handily. They need to do what the committee liked about them before, which was their ability to win games by large margins. And that that seemed to be, I think, the the key to how the committee evaluated Indiana in the mix. And that's what went away the
last couple of weeks. I I agree with that. I think they do need to show the the team that was there the 1st 9 weeks, the team that was putting up 45 points per game and beaten teams by 30. That team needs to be the one that shows up. This can't be. I understand it's cold and weather is going to be a factor, but this is a game where the offense needs to be. They were at the time one of the best scoring offenses in the country before these past two weeks.
So that this is the type of game you have to have a performance like that show the country, not just for your own self-confidence of a team, but you got to show the country that you belong in this moment because they, they believe they belong and rightfully so, especially if they're 11:00 and 1:00. But there's people that don't think they belong. That's that's that's where it all comes out to those people that don't think are the ones that are talking on this committee show right here.
Yeah. Well, you know, ultimately, I think you, this is where you probably got to root for root for South Carolina because again, as you said, I have a hard time envisioning a scenario where they're going to put a, a three loss SEC team in over a one loss Big 10 team. I could see them trying to put another ACC team in the mix if it's Clemson and Clemson is the bigger brand between those two. And, and clearly, you know, that matters.
Of course, these folks at ESPN after harping on Indiana's strength of schedule forever, you know, as, as we hear from our, our folks in the chat are now downplaying the strength of schedule jump like it doesn't matter. So as I said before, the disingenuous arguments are going to be disingenuous regardless of what the scenario is. This is this is very much what you can expect from ESPN and the way that they have tried to shape the agenda on all of this
stuff. It's it's pretty, it's pretty despicable, but it's, it's part of what they do. So I don't know. It's the committee clearly has some questions within itself about what it's deciding to prefer within this process. And you know, Indiana's again, they're they're going to have to go out and, and show no mercy and, and leave no doubt against Purdue and then hope some, they
get some extra cushion. We're we're we'll see a lot more next week, obviously, because most teams will be done by next week in terms of their their seasons. We'll just have the conference championship games afterwards. And so we'll get a better sense at that point of who's gonna get in and what that's going to look like. So that's that's kind of where things are AT. And I don't know, it's gonna be really fascinating next. Yeah, I don't. Know if it'll be fun?
It might be stressful for some, but. It's the. Holiday season isn't it? That's right. That's what we need more stress around the holidays, Joe. So anyway, you know, it's again, we'll, we'll see what happens. We'll have more podcast coverage coming up later on this week. Obviously a little tough with the holidays, but we should, we'll at least have a preview episode coming up for the Purdue game.
And we'll have obviously our recap show on Sunday as Indiana comes out of that game, hopefully victorious by a wide margin and creating, you know, or, or lessening the doubt, shall we say, as far as the committee's concerned. So we'll we'll go ahead and and get ready to wrap up here. Joe, any final thoughts from you? Not really I think, like a lot of the comments are saying it's
kind of just a win and end show. What like I said before, this is the one like you just got to this get the get back. That's that's what it all comes down to. There's been so much buzz around this team this season, the highs and the very slim amount of lows there, and they have to ride the high that they had for the 1st 9 weeks. And it's very capable of doing it because I mean, we've seen it in front of our own eyes the majority of this season.
This team is talented. This team, I believe is deserving of the one of the 12 spots because they've played like one of the top 12 teams and they're deserving of it. And there's no reason they should be left out because of name brand I that's in. That's crazy to me. Yeah, well, that's we'll we'll see. I mean, you know, the, the big question mark is they jumped Clemson 5 spots from the last CFP rankings to this 112th or
from 17th to 12th. And that was off of a a win against Pittsburgh. So what happens, you know, this week if, if Clemson ends up beating South Carolina, I, I feel like it's hard to make an argument for South Carolina over Indiana. It's probably easier in the committee committee's eyes to make an argument for a 10 and two team over an 11 and one team. But we'll, we'll have to see how things play out. So anyway, we'll go ahead and wrap up here.
My thanks to all you folks for joining us here on Bison chat. We'll be back obviously with another Bison chat next Tuesday. We'll sync that up with the rankings reveal as well. We'll also have, as I mentioned, the rest of our programming on the back home network and across all the IU sports media properties. So for Joe and for our producer, Emily Fox, I'm Galen Clavio. Thanks for joining us here tonight, folks. We will catch you folks.
On the flip side, bring back the Bison, stay never daunted. So everybody.