You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast, GAIL and Clavio Scott Caulfield joining you. It is Sunday, December 1st in Indiana is 11 and one. The fever dream continues Scott. An absolute complete destruction of Purdue. There's almost not words to describe how one sided that game was last night and just a
beautiful scene in the snow. The first night bucket game, first snow bucket game I can remember in a long time and an Indiana team that was clearly out to prove a point. We're going to talk about all of that. It was it was one of those nights. If you were there, you'll never forget the experience. At least that's that's how I've kind of woken up and thought about it. Scott, how are you doing today? I'm doing great and I was thinking about this.
It's like, on one hand we don't even need to do a podcast 'cause it's just an ass. Kicking right, Just replay the the the game you know I mean. Just be like, hey, 6, I mean, like every stat is gonna be unbelievable that there's really no need to dive into the numbers. Like like, you know, Osterman had his like, you know, recap. It's like all a pluses across the board.
On the flip side, it's like, let's do 2 hours 'cause we don't normally get to, you know, have an ass kicking this good in the Big 10, especially Purdue. So let's let's do a three hour podcast. Just dig into every single fun stat we can get from the game last night. Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, we've we've watched IU football for a long time. We don't get very many opportunities to revel in a huge IU blowout win in this series. But this is beyond Scott. Like this was history.
This was the largest margin of victory in the series for Indiana over Purdue. I think it might have been Purdue's largest margin of loss in a, in a, a power conference game. I, I was just one of those games where everything came together. It was Indiana wanting to prove a point and prove that they were still the, the very strong team that we had seen throughout the course of the 1st 10 weeks. It was also Purdue clearly kind of running out of steam about a
possession into the game. Yeah, you know Indiana scored 66 and can legitimately say we left some points out on the field. That kind of surprise on that last drive that they took a knee. Like there's a world where I'm like, I think another, it was another interception, I think. And it's like they could go for seven. Like 7074 would be a nice number to end on. 70 looks good on you. No, but I'm kind of glad that they stopped just because like you don't want to pile too much on.
I think we did enough. Anyway, we're going to talk about all that. We're going to talk about College Football Playoff implications, everything else that happened yesterday coming up here on the show. First of all, just a reminder folks, we are part of the Back Home Network and the Back Home Network is brought to you by Home Field Apparel, your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs. Scott's got a cow hoodie on from Home Field.
Why What? What made you? They didn't help us yesterday. Why are you supporting them? They didn't help us now my dad went to Cal. So just it was it was an honor of him. And it's it's a cool. It's like the Okie, the Okie bear. I love, I love the logo. That's fair. I've also got some home field on here. I've got the the crew neck. Sorry, sorry. I did just buy the Never daunted, the never daunted and then we are going to Hawaii in
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have signed up for that already. All right, Scott, we're to begin with this Indiana with the 66 to nothing victory over the Purdue Boilermakers. We, we had talked a little bit last week about there was some fear coming into this game that I think was natural for any IU football fan that had been around the block a few times. And you saw some of it earlier on in the day and, and earlier on in the week with some of
these rivalry games. You saw Georgia have to go to what's 8 overtimes to beat rival Georgia Tech, who's a good team, certainly much better than Purdue. But you know, we saw that in other rivalry games is what we saw Clemson lose on their home field to South Carolina. Again, a good Clemson team. But you know, sometimes we've seen bad teams go in and make a real trouble for the the the favored team. And there was none of that
today. Like Indiana came out and it took a little bit of time to get the offense going. The defense was ready from the get go. And then when the offense got going, there was really not a lot else to talk about. It was like basically a 2 1/2 hour celebration. Curtis Rourke unworking, 6 touchdown passes and 349 yards. Indiana rushing for 2:37.
Any thoughts? We had, Scott, that this might be a game, a trap game of sorts for an Indiana team that that struggled against Ohio State and had seemed to struggle offensively. All those thoughts kind of went out the window. By the end of the first quarter, it was clear that Indiana had come to play.
Yeah, I mean, in the worst case scenario view of this game that you were worried that, you know, it would be similar to like, you know, the Michigan State game where Purdue just gets off a quick score somehow or it just stays relatively close, kind of like the Maryland game. And then, you know, you're in a tight game, the weather's tough, Maybe it's you're you have a
hard time moving the ball. And we had both been worried about, you know, the the last two games, our offense has not looked as good as it had in the past. Now, you know, whether it comes back because it's Purdue is a different story. But it came back, you know, like this was within 1/4 or two. You're like, Oh no, they, they have all mastery. It's like they had a drive where they ran 2 reverses in the same drive. And it's just like, hey, this works.
Let's just keep doing this and then we'll try something else and oh, that works, let's keep doing that. And it's like it's, it's almost like, you know, Signeti's like, well, I have all these plays. I really wanted to try some stuff, but do we do the stuff that's working? Do we try new stuff that's working? It's it's called, it's called unloading the clip I believe is what you're talking about. And then?
And then it just became clear it's like this this team has, you know, pretty well has no fight like this is not this is not going to be a very close game. And you know, we talked about it on Crimson cash. I'm very nervous about, you know, Indiana with a 28 point advantage at home. They cover that And and I was I we're we kind of talked about betting it down to 23 just because 28 see, you know, I I thought we were going to win, but 20 eights that that's a tough that's a tough putt.
No problem cleared it all good. And the thing that I will say is, you know, we've talked a little bit about Curtis Rourke is, is the thumb injury and I had noticed kind of going back rewatching some of the drives from Michigan, Ohio State, even Michigan State. You did see it almost like he was pushing the ball more and the the ball didn't have as tight of a spiral and you could see he was still throwing well and still hitting it well, but like it was fluttering a little
bit. Didn't kind of have the tight spiral he had. That all seemed to come back last night. Like his throws were tight. They were really on point and again, not knocking it from a force. You could just tell he was struggling more with the thumb. It feels like something happened in the last week or maybe we need to play all games and sub
freezing temperatures. But it did feel like his his thumb got a a ton better in the last week because he was throwing the ball with with tightness and zip that I don't feel like we've seen in a couple of weeks. Yeah, it's, it was so important. I think on a number of levels that Indiana look as good as they did in this game.
And it really did start with Rourke, who I think there were open questions not about his talent, not about his ability, but about his performance over the course of, you know, the last couple of games. And was that purely because of the pass rush? Was it because of the injury? Was it something else that he hit a wall? And even, you know, in the first quarter, there were some concerning moments because the blitz got to him a couple of
times. And you're like, my God, if Purdue can blitz and and get to the quarterback, we got real problems. But I think what we finally saw out of Rourke was some quicker decision making. We saw some plays that allowed him to do some quicker decision making. Certainly the running game starting to work as it rolled and gained steam in that first half took some of the pressure off the line.
And look, I think overall, I think Indiana needed this game and Rourke needed this game and Elijah Surratt needed this game to feel better about themselves as we move forward. You know, it's one thing to get it going again in practice. It's another to be able to go out there and have the kind of performance where you put 586 yards of offense on the board, you put 66 points on the board, you capitalize basically every time you get the opportunity to over the last three quarters.
You know that to me first, you know, when I went into this game, it's like, I want the win, obviously, and I want Indiana to cover because I think that's important in the eyes of the committee. And it's like, well, if we can
get those boxes checked off. What I would really like is to see a game where it's just highlight after highlight after highlight and where it's a steady combination of explosive plays and then just drives where you're rolling down the field and they can't really do a whole lot against you. And and that's basically what we got, Scott. I mean, you look at, you know, there were two really only two possessions you could say that Indiana like failed at in terms
of their movement. The the very first one, five play, 7 yards and then the missed field goal where they've got the the interception and then couldn't convert. But everything else, it was like 9 play touchdown, 9 play touchdown, 4 play touchdown, 7 play touchdown, you know, and then 42 yard touchdown drive, 48 yard touchdown drive, 76 yard touchdown drive, 17 yard one play drive for a touchdown.
Those are the kinds of things that I think help the rooms that are, you know, contributing to this offense to go back and be like, OK, here's what we're doing, right? Here's how we need to attack this. And it was just great to see so many IU players get involved again after the Ohio State game, where very few players were able to contribute offensively. So yes, and what we'll do some
good comedy here. Yes and the the defense, what I was really happy with it. You know, you got to it at one point. I'm like, well, maybe they'll just not give up a first down. That'd be fun. But you know, by the middle of second quarter, it's like it would really be great to have a shut out here because it was definitely a a possibility. But you know, weird stuff happens where you know, guy can break and you get a field goal or there can be a punt return or something.
I I love messing up, but we'll do recite the driver. I was going to name the drive just kind of mess me up there, but recite the drive you took in the end. Let me take Purdue. This is this is really something of of staggering beauty. Here are their drives by plays. 3 plays, punt. 3 plays, interception 3 plays, punt. 3 plays, punt. 3 plays, punt 6 for 27 yards. Indiana's got to work on that. That's that's quite a drive and also ended in a punt. One play, fumble. 3 play, punt.
3 play, punt. 3 play, punt, 2 play, fumble, 7 play, punt again. You know, we got got some things to work on guys. 3 plays, punt. 2. Plays, interception, that's unbelievable. You, you had two drives that went over 3 plays, all of them ending in punts, fumbles or interceptions. I think the fact that they got they, they got the shutout was also important because that's, that's a, that's a really cool
bar. That's something that I know teams, you know, strive for when it, when it's available, it's like, hey, let's really get our stamp here. And also, you know what, when you're looking at style points, which is what Indiana is now going to have to do and try to impress the committee, 66 zero just looks empirically better than 66 six or well, I guess 666 would be freaky for a lot of
people. But like, you know, 6612 or something, even though it's still the same domination, this really just does show it's a zero, man. That's a complete 0. And that's a real win for the defense. It is. And look, I mean, the, the, the margin to me, God, we owed Purdue for so many past games. I mean, and, and it's one of those where I just, I have, I have 0 remorse about Purdue
anyway. But anybody who was like, God, you guys ran the score up. I just want to note, like go back and look at the history of the series in West Lafayette in 2008. Purdue wins 62 to 10. I don't recall them ever lamenting scoring that many points on Indiana and. They weren't doing that for style points like they had a college for a playoff berth on
the on the line that. Year, you know, in in in 2463 to 24 was the final, you know, in Bloomington my freshman year, you're like junior year or sophomore year 56 to seven loss. So you know, there were a lot of of demons and and phantoms to get out of the closet with this one. And you know, in a series that is really since it began been very one sided in the direction of Purdue.
It was so fitting that this year's Indiana football team, one that is broken people's idea of what it means to be Indiana football, one that is completely reset the attitude and the mentality of the program For them to be able to go in and hand Indiana the largest margin of victory in series history is it's so it's poetic, Scott. I mean, I, I couldn't have I it was, it's such a perfect way for the regular season to end that
exclamation point. That will be another data point we look back on 10/20/30 years down the line that will highlight just how special this season has been for Indiana. It's funny, my my wife is on a text chain with a bunch of teachers who all went to, you know, taught at Westfield and there's a Westfield player on on Purdue, all Dylan, but he plays defense and they were texting like, God, it feels so bad for him. Like he's a good kid.
I can't believe this. There's like always like being very nice teachers and someone just ends with a text like he should have gone to IU. But you know, the, the stats, like I mentioned before, are just unbelievable. You know, the, the Ryan Phillips, our, our friend of the network has just was tweeting out stuff at the end of the game like Indiana average 7.76 yards per play tonight. Purdue averaged 1.97. You know, it's, it's Purdue had 67 yards total. Indiana had 66 points and 583
total yards. I mean, there there are. It's literally you could, we could do a stat mash up of this game for probably the next five years and just continue to find unbelievable stats out of this. I mean this was absolute ass kicking. The big one, of course, was that Purdue ended up with 13 rushing yards on 24 attempts in this game. And James Carpenter, the defensive lineman for Indiana, rush once for 18 yards.
I mean, you know, it's, it's just, you know, Tavan Jackson, who was barely in the game, rushed for 20 yards at a touchdown. So this was one of those. It's funny, like it's not the biggest margin of victory ever
in the series. That actually belongs to the 1892 game, which shouldn't count in the record books anyway because Indiana had so few players that year that the Indiana Daily student actually like, wrote a column shaming the men of Indiana University into going and playing football because they had so few people on the team That was 68. Years we also played the alumni association.
I was, yes, and like and like the Indianapolis Light Armory as well, but that that was a 68. I mean, you know, that year Georgia had a great CFP chance OPS. That but that was that was 68 to nothing but that this is the second largest margin in the entire series history, which this is the one in modern football. So I think this one counts a little bit more.
But yeah, look, it it I don't know that we'll it's there's a column by Greg Doyle in the star today that basically kind of highlights the separation right now between Purdue and Indiana. And, you know, Indiana's never been this good. It's true. And Purdue, you know, there are probably have been years where they've been about this bad, but they've never been worse than they are this year. I just, it's fascinating to me how quick all of this happened.
You know, you know, I mean, that's the one thing that I keep coming back to. You know, we watched the bucket game last year and it just felt like that was a bad Purdue team. Like you didn't, you didn't look at that Purdue team and say that they're very good. You know, that Purdue team last year, what did, what did they even finish last year?
They were, they were 4:00 and 8:00 and they beat Indiana 35 to 31. And there was one of the more demoralizing things, like when you think about Kurt Signetti's comments on his early time in Bloomington after he got hired and talking about how everybody was so down in the dumps and was so negative about football. That loss to Purdue was a big reason why. It's like, wow, we couldn't pull it together to win against what was a a really subpar Purdue
team last year. It's wild that 365 days later, Indiana hangs 66 on Purdue on route to finishing an 11 and one regular season Purdue is dead in the water. They their one win was against Indiana State this year. I mean, you know, that is the ultimate in that escalated quickly. You know, Purdue fans that I've talked to about this are just kind of like what, you know, the Signeti thing just kind of came in like a tornado and was so fast. And it's been such a, an extreme
makeover. We've seen these programs kind of tangle back and forth. They've kind of been in the same morass for the last 2530 years trading spots. This is just so different. It's so unexpected that Indiana's pulled it together like this. And this being the end result is is something that's fascinating and kind of hard to get your head wrapped around.
Yeah, no, the the one year, even if you go back, you know, 2021, that was the year, you know, IU under Allen did not have the great backup to you know, that was the year I think they went was like 2 and 10, two and 10. But Purdue was nine and four that year. You know that they have Brahm it it looks like, you know, they are they have a win over Michigan State, who is ranked 9th at the time. You know, that's a team that goes to a bowl.
I remember at the time thinking like, man, how are we gonna, how are we gonna come back from this? So I, I guess a little bit of humility. These things can flip quickly. At least right now. It does feel it. It is very much, it's unbelievable how quickly this has turned 'cause it has been 12 months, but even, you know, four or five years in a row it, it was just Purdue would kind of own the series out outside of, you know. In 2022, Purdue was in the Big
10 title game. Now they backed in because of the, the, the hideousness of the Big 10 W, but they were in the Big 10 title game in December of 2022. It's wild. But in less than two years, things have flipped to this degree. And look, I, I think Purdue's got to do something. It feels like I, I don't know how you keep Walters as your head coach at this point. Now that's their business, not mine obviously, but they lost like 3 recruits this week who
reopened their commitment there. Look, I'd I wouldn't have wanted it was actually I will. I want to talk about the weather a minute, but as a prelude to that, it wasn't that bad yesterday at the game. I didn't think it was that cold, but you could see Purdue just did not want to have any part of efforting in that environment. They kind of, they just kind of gave up the effort early. I so I just, Purdue feels like
has to do something. I don't know what they do at this point, but it is a really fascinating spot for them to be. And like you said, these things can change very quickly. Well, when what's, what's awesome is what all they're going to talk about now in for the, the next 5 or 6 months in West Lafayette is we got to do what Indiana did right?
Which is great. Like, because they're going to look at it and be like, God damn it, Like how do we, how do we get our, that is exactly what they're going to be saying, which, which just makes me even happier. It's not just we got to solve a problem. It's like we got to go do exactly what Indiana did. I want to play multimedia corner here real quick. Just a couple of beautiful things from this game. So if you're on YouTube, which you should, it's, it's fun to see us. It's fun to see you.
YouTube's great. Earlier in the week you had the Georgia, Georgia Tech game which had this win probability, which you're not watching on YouTube is maybe the wildest win probability I've ever seen where it literally goes 100% both ways like 5 different times. I never thought I'd see something weirder than that. But if you look at the win probability for the Purdue, Indiana game, it literally just goes at 100% and then just stays there. It's maybe like 9394% it. It's unbelievable.
And then I will say, I thought we had hit our peak with bucket and cigar pictures for Indiana football. But then Mike Kadik, who just was like Mr. Bucket for the entire night. There's memes of him going on with like pictures of guys with buckets, but there's a picture of him in the weight room with a bucket and a cigar. Not the Xander Diamant, but just just great stuff out there. And but those wind probabilities were were unbelievable.
And Indiana 1 is just great. Just seeing it like 100% the whole way there, I was like, we were text. I had to text Shane with some friends. There's a Purdue guy on there and it's like the third quarter, we texted that out and he's like, oh, you're still saying there's a .0001% chance? Right. I know. Yeah. I mean, look, it was just such a dominant performance by Indiana.
And again, they needed it right at at that spot more than anything else to just kind of silence the haters a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about the environment. That was so much fun. I mean, the snow started to fall a little bit around 4430. I, we, we modified our tailgate schedule because there was concern. I don't want to get people too cold. You know, it's like we got to make it through the whole game.
So we started our tailgate a little later than normal, about 445 still had a bunch of people show up, which was awesome to see. And then we just kind of watched as the snow continued to fall. By the time he got into the stadium, there was a dusting, the snow was flying in the lights. It just, it was so picturesque. I hope they got some drone footage or something of it throughout the course of the game. And it was really quite pleasant.
Like if you I'm I'm not people know, not a big cold weather guy, don't really like going outside that much. I was not bothered by the environment or the conditions. It just felt like a lot of fun the whole time and again, it's it the whole place just looked like a snow globe that just continually had a little bit of agitation then and stuff was popping into the air. It was it's a lasting visual for me. Scott like to to and, and I think we were worried all week about the crowd.
We were worried all week that people were going to be too cold. Ticket prices were bouncing around about two hours before the game. I think the get in price was like $9. But Scott, I mean, people were there like it was, it was about 95% full. People were loud, people were excited. Yes, the stands started to clear out some of the third quarter 'cause I think people kind of hit their limit a little bit at that point. But you know, I stayed for the whole game, got to see all of
the scores. It just was one of those party atmospheres the whole time in there. And I think that as much as we were worried about IU fans flaking out because of the cold weather, I give a big salute to everybody that showed up for the game. And it was just that that's the that's the reason why you go to those games. And that's that kind of environment really makes Memorial Stadium a tremendously fun place to be. That's awesome. I was one of the guys who flaked out.
Sorry. Well, here's here's my We were going to go Friday night. We went to the state championship game in Lucas Oil because Westfield was playing. Everyone who was in charge of that should be fired right now. So if you work at West Lucas Oil you should be fired. They have like 3 entrances open the lines to get in. Took us 25 minutes waiting to get into a stadium for a high school football game, but we're standing outside and our kids
were not super happy. Our 8 year old was really not enjoying the cold and we were just like, look, this is about the same temperature as it's going to be in Bloomington. If it wasn't for the kids at which is you could say a lot of things in life, I, I would have been there. I'm, I'm sure your, your kids probably weren't there the entire time like that. That's what we are wrestling with is driving all the way down there and then having them just be absolutely freezing and miserable.
I think my wife and I could have made it. We're actually trying to find a babysitter kind of last minute. Couldn't do it so we, we decided to you know what I just don't want to fight an 8 year old the entire time on, you know, and, and just going to find some place warm and then watching on TV like what's the point? So I almost thought about going
myself. I'm very bummed I didn't make it, but I, I still love my kids and but I, I wasn't we were not able to go. We were able to get the tickets. We had some friends who were down there who are IU fans who took the tickets. So we did not we, we gave them to, to to good use. But yeah, unfortunately just it was going to be too cold for the kids. Well, it happens. It was, it was there were a decent number of kids at the stadium, but not as many as they
normally were. There's normally a big congregation of them that like right near where my seats are. And so it was, it was interesting the the crowd that did show up because I mean, the, the students showed up at where there weren't as many students, I think as they normally were. And it wasn't quite as loud down there. But I give the alums and everybody else that was in the stands just a lot of credit for what they brought to the table.
And it got loud and I think people just really were enjoying themselves, it felt like. And and I was really, I was pleased. On TV, it looked. Awesome. Yeah, it really was. So, so Indiana finishes 11 and one. And, you know, as we've talked about, Scott, a lot of things that are in play as far as the College Football Playoff is concerned, that becomes the the focus.
There was a glimmer of hope early on in the day that Indiana might backdoor their way into the Big 10 championship game with Ohio State losing to Michigan. Apparently, Michigan's now good. I, I, you know, Indiana beat Michigan and, and they actually got penalized for it in the eyes of a lot of people because they'd only beat them by 5. Now Michigan is apparently good now because they beat Ohio State by three, No. But that doesn't matter toward IU now. Ohio State's bad now.
Ohio State's bad that's. Actually what what has changed? Michigan was was still bad for us, but Ohio State's now bad. Also no longer a good loss like those SEC losses. The the Maryland Terrapins took a 7 nothing or 7 three weeks. Maryland's action going to help us out at one point. This no, no, not going to happen. So you know that that dream died.
Maryland finishes one and eight. A terrible season for them and, and, and like many of Indiana opponents, they simply could not hold up their end of the bargain in the games that they played this year. I mean, it's amazing to me. State could have made a bowl and been a 500 team helped out. It's like now we'll just get completely throttled by Rutgers. Nebraska could have gone seven and five and and maybe knocked on the door getting ranked. Nope. They blew it in the second-half against Iowa.
You know, UCLA had USC, you know, to rights last week. And of course they lose that game. So they're 5:00 and 7:00. You know, Washington, they at least finished 6th and 6th. Thank you Washington. But then they have a chance to maybe do something against Oregon. No, they get boat raced in that game. At least Michigan we can, we can tip our caps to Michigan. They at least went out and made something of themselves as the season came to a close.
So thank you Michigan for that. But you can point. Your flag wherever you want. Now we'll allow it. But so it ends up with Oregon and Penn State now being in the Big 10 title game. And Indiana essentially has two things that they're waiting for right now. One is the College Football Playoff reveal for this upcoming
week. And I think things played out very favorably for Indiana. Not there wasn't like everything went favorably or as favorably as it could have gone for Indiana. But the results that Indiana needed were there. I mean, it would have been great if Georgia had lost that game to Georgia Tech that I will. I will constantly look back on that and wonder what if in terms of seating, right? But you know, you go down the rest of the of the the list of things.
Ohio State losing is big because it not only hands Ohio State a second loss whereas Indiana only has one. It also puts Penn State now into a position where they could pick up a second loss playing Oregon in the college football or, excuse me, in the Big 10 championship game, which in that scenario would leave Indiana as the only one loss team. But do you think in the Big 10? Yes. Do you? Think there's any way that Ohio State or Penn State go below Indiana in the rankings?
Even with, I mean, it's hard to probably not, but I could see a scenario if Penn State loses big to Oregon where, you know, perhaps there is some consideration about moving Indiana ahead of Penn State. Because right now, I mean, if you think about it, you know, Indiana lost against Ohio State and they dropped in the rankings by 5 spots, which I think was extreme given what else has occurred. And I'm fascinated to see what happens to Ohio State. You know, do they get dropped below Indiana?
Probably not because of the head to head, but the reality is they lost a game at home to Michigan. That has to count for something. Yeah, Penn State, it's like. Team, We lost the number two team in the country, like right. Right now I'm projecting that Penn State will be #3 in the country, in the CFP rankings, it'll go Oregon, Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio State, SMU, Indiana, Boise State, Miami, Arizona State. That would be my guess right
now. As far as where we where we land with this next CFP, it it is certainly possible if Penn State loses by a large margin that they could drop five spots. I don't know if they dropped six. But then it kind of comes down to what other results happen. And you know, what's going to be interesting is like you, you want Texas to beat Georgia now because you want to hand Georgia another loss. And maybe the committee will finally look at Georgia and say, I don't know about you.
You may not actually be that good. You know, you or hey, losses actually matter. Maybe losses will matter. Yeah. And I think as as good of a story as they are, SMU losing to Clemson would be probably good for Indiana from a seating perspective. I don't know if Clemson would get knocked or excuse me, if SMU would get knocked out. But Clemson losing yesterday, that was the other big result means that they are not going to jump up into the CFP top 11.
And that was a real concern with where they were at this last week. That was kind of the big one where as I got, if they beat South Carolina, I could see the committee trying to justify them in ahead of Indiana. But if they beat SMU in the title game, if if you that that's two teams then right? Like would that be a bid stealer situation if SMU is still in the top 12? Yeah, it's, it's a well, here's the thing.
I, I don't know exactly how they would deal with all of that because it's like I could see Clemson being in a situation where they knock both ACC teams out if they win the, the ACC title game, or I could see them keeping one in but not the other. It's kind of unfair. But I mean, SMU, it kind of feels like they have to win the ACC title game in order to get in because a loss to Clemson would be now a loss to a three loss team. And then with would that also take Miami out?
Because it wouldn't make sense to have Miami in ahead of SMU because SMU made the title game and Miami didn't. So I don't know it's this is, this is where, when they, when they, when they've said to us, we're not going to penalize teams that lose in the conference title game. I, I do wonder and I'd love to hear some clarity on this.
Maybe it's been asked and answered already, but do they mean we're not going to drop A-Team out of the playoff for something that happens in the in the title game for your conference? Or does it mean you're going to stay in the draw, but we're going to drop you down from a seating perspective? That's that's a really interesting open question. And that's where it's like, if they're not going to drop seating, then yeah, I think Indiana probably doesn't have a great shot to host.
But I could see a scenario where if Oregon beats Penn State, if Texas beats Georgia, now Indiana maybe ends up 6th in the final CFP poll. And that would make them an eighth seed. And that would have them hosting in the first round. But it really does depend at that point on whether the committee would move Indiana ahead of Penn State. They feel like at this point, the biggest obstacle to Indiana potentially hosting a first round playoff game. Yeah, I know.
I I've, and I've been saying this for a couple weeks to you too, Like I'm just, I'm really curious to see how they handle these, these the, the title, the conference title game. They're, they're setting a precedent. And, and yeah, it's like, are they going to, to me? There's a couple of questions, like are you going to readjust seating? Are you just going to say, all you can do is improve yourself? You can't really hurt yourself. You know, you made it. That's a bonus.
You know, that's something that other teams did, which is true. It's like you, you're Georgia, you made the SEC championship game. But I also think I would love, I, I hope they don't, I hope the committee doesn't get to skate on this one. Like I hope that Texas beats Georgia or Clemson beats SMU because I want to see the answer of, OK, you're in the top 12, you go to your playoff game, you lose. Theoretically, if Georgia or SMU loses, they should be out. Are they going to be out?
Because that also sets an interesting precedent because I mean, it's it's been talked about, you know, again, with Indiana, we should have forfeited all of our games based on ESPN. But it's been talked about, you know, if you want to win the title, does the, you know, conference championship game help or hurt you? I think it's a little bit absurd. Like if you're Indiana, you make the Big 10 title game, you go play like you just, you go play that.
I don't care what, but it's going to be interesting if they do bounce A-Team. That's setting an interesting precedent where it's like, all right now, now you do need to look at maybe we need to re engineer how this works for college, you know, for the, for the big conferences and, and they'll probably just go to 16 teams and get both the team's automatic bids that make it or something. But I, I'm very curious to see what would happen there.
And I, I hope if Georgia SMU both win, then I'm going to be a little bit annoyed because I want to see how the committee answers. This. There's some as. I've also said too, it's like if you're not going to, if you're not going to bump people, then just get, get come out with like here's our 12 teams, like don't rank them, but here's the 12 going into the title games and we'll rank them after that. And if you're not going to adjust seating, then just give us a bracket now.
But I mean, I know you're not going to do that 'cause you need another week of TV and all that, but it's there. There are some really interesting questions that haven't had clarity and it does affect Indiana. I, I agree with you. I think Indiana is in I, I think our path to a home game is very tight. I think it's still possible, but more than likely we're probably going to be on the road. Yeah. I mean, I think at this point you're probably right.
I think a lot of it depends on what is the committee end up doing this week with the rankings. And you know, you can go down the list and I'm going to pop the list up here on on YouTube so those of you who are watching can see what we're talking about. Let me let me call this up real quick here. So if you look here on the left and sorry for my voice a little too much screaming in enjoy last night at the game for me. I'm going to zoom in on that a little bit.
So so you've got Oregon who won. So they're 12 and no, they'll be the number one team. So Ohio State loses. Logically, Texas, who beats Texas A&M will become #2 right, you've got. So how far does Ohio State fall with a loss like that at home to Michigan? That becomes the operative question. You figure they're going to fall below Penn State, who'll move up to third. They're going to fall below Notre Dame, who was very impressive to give them their
their credit at USC. So Notre Dame will be 4th, Miami lost, Georgia winning. It's like, you hate to give them credit, but this is where the this is where the committee get has gotten itself. I think it is some trouble because the committee is going to be like, well, we can't rank Georgia behind Tennessee because Tennessee lost to Georgia.
Even though if you look at how they just played and I think you could make an argument over the course of the season, Tennessee may actually be a slightly more impressive team right now than Georgia is. You know, so, but the committee's almost certainly going to be like, we can't do that. So that leaves Georgia as the the what, the five seed or the the fifth team in the poll. Then you've got who's next? You know, Miami lost. So Tennessee moves up right behind Georgia.
SMU, they're not going to drop. Does Indiana end up So does does Ohio State stay ahead of SMU or do they fall behind SMU? Ohio State will certainly, because of the same logic I just described, stay ahead of Indiana even though they've got one more loss than Indiana. Boise State will likely stay behind Indiana. There was nothing that happened in their game that would have moved them ahead of Indiana. So then what happens? Does Miami fall to 11th?
Does Miami, with that second loss, fall further? You look down and you start to see the teams that are there. Well, Clemson, who was 12th just on the outside lost, Alabama
won. So they're going to move Alabama up. They're going to keep Alabama ahead of Ole Miss. Certainly these are the things that I think are really fascinating with this whole process because as you start to go down and, and look at the, the remainder of the pole and the rankings, it's, it's just not as clear cut as one might think in terms of where the
rankings go from there. And, and I'm really curious because it feels like the committee's been so reactionary in certain ways with not in others, but they have more or less been consistent in saying, well, if you're winning games that we're going to reward that and we're going to reward head to So I feel like at this point it would be a a a scandal of the highest order if Indiana wasn't in the top 12 of the CFP. Well, I think we, we move up a
spot no matter what, right? Because my, we're going ahead of. My, we don't go ahead of Miami. And so the question becomes like in the pecking order. I'm just curious, like does does the committee look at SMU and say, well, we're going to keep SMU above Indiana simply because we've had SMU above Indiana? When you look at the actual like, you know, the, the, the statistics, Indiana's got a better strength of schedule than SMU, better strength of record, arguably has better wins overall.
Like there's not a lot there for SMU to say definitively they're better than Indiana. That's why I was kind of irritated that they ranked SMU ahead of Indiana in the last one. I'm just really curious to see what they do with all of this because their logic is starting to eat itself a little bit. Yeah, because theoretically, if you're having good wins and good, you know, showing a lot of good stuff on tape, we should move up a spot just based on our
our performance. The the other thing I think is going to be really interesting is, you know, this is this is a playoff to find the champion, but this is also a a chess match between the SEC and the Big 10. And it just like you said, you know, in previous years, like when when Indiana didn't make make it in 2020, it was based on giving yourself the best chance to win a title. That's still, you know, now it's tonnage. How many can you get in?
But there's also going to be some and I'm sure the Big 10 internally is thinking of this. You also want to give yourself the best chance to win a title and with having three at large teams, I'm sure there's going to be some jockeying to let's not have Indiana play Penn State or Ohio State in the first round. If they can get their all three at larges separated and have a chance of getting 4 into the quarterfinals, that's more preferable than having two automatically knock one off.
If you're the SEC, that's what you're going to want. So it's going to be really curious to see how that comes in because yes, they're taking all these things into account, but there's also a fact that if you're the Big 10, you want more bites of the apple and the farther your teams make, the more money you make. So all, everything you said is real. But if I'm the big 10, it's like, all right, all of that makes sense.
But if it, if it, if we do all that based on, you know, our, our metrics and it comes up that Indiana and Penn State are 8-9, maybe I'm just like, hey, let's make Indiana 11. Just, you know, can we re engineer it? So we could possibly have Oregon, Indiana, Ohio State and Penn State all make the quarterfinals. It's a really interesting question.
I mean, if you look at the where I'm projecting it right now based upon those rankings that I had earlier and assuming Arizona State ends up winning the the Big 12, the first round matchups in in my projected CFP. And this is of course we, we still have conference championship week to go. You'd have Penn State hosting Arizona State in a 512 game. You'd have Notre Dame hosting Miami in the 611. You'd have Georgia hosting Indiana in the 710.
And you'd have Tennessee, Ohio State in the 8-9 and. I got you Georgia Tech. Like Georgia Tech, could you not get it done and eat overtime? I know, I know there's a lot of there's gonna be a lot of like just like that close kinds of things. I think we'll see we're. Just like the one team I really don't wanna. But you know what? I gotta be honest with you, Scott, Like George, there's something not quite right with Georgia right now. I know, I realize that.
But again, this is where conference championship week, this is where don't get attached to any of these rankings. Indiana's done everything it can do. And I guess I think the number one thing that I have focused on with all of this is as long as Indiana pops up in, you know, the top 9 of the draw, they're safe. They're there's, there's nothing that's going to happen during conference championship week that's going to change things for Indiana as far as the play offs concerned.
Yeah, 'cause nobody can come in. That's not knocking somebody out. That's the thing. So if you look at the game, the game lineup right now for championship week is as follows. You've got in the Big 12, you're going to have Iowa State and Arizona State. That one you that that will be the 12 seed at this point, whoever wins that game, you've got Georgia, Texas, that's at 4:00. Now this is one where I think you, you, there's two, there's two schools of thought here.
If Georgia is going to be in regardless, I don't think they should be. But if they're if they're fifth in the poll and they lose that game, even with three losses, I bet the committee puts them in, but we'll probably drop them. You would hope, you would hope at some point that the losses might matter. But the other field, the other, the other thought process. And it's probably not as valid now. But it's like, well, what if Texas loses that game? Does Texas become in danger of
dropping to like a nine seed? And could that be something where Indiana sneaks in and gets the eight seed and hosts? You've got Penn State, Oregon, who we already talked about you, you want to root for Oregon in that game because you'd prefer Oregon, you would rather have as the number one overall seed at this point. And you'd like Penn State to get
that second loss. And then as you mentioned, Clemson, SMU, which kind of feels like an elimination game because you know, if SMU beats Clemson, there's Clemson's not getting in that there's there's no there's no argument for them getting in right now. Basically, this is a winner. Go home for a nine and three Clemson team SMU. And again, I'm going to I'm going to recite who SMU has played and what the results are so far this year.
Here's their wins at Nevada at home versus Houston Christian. Good luck finding them on the Internet. They lost to BYU 18 to 50. 1884. Schedule or yes that's right, they they travelled to Deseret and and defeated BYU alumni club. Sorry, they they beat TCU who's not ranked. They let 42 points up to TCU rivalry game. They beat Florida State who's terrible. They win at Louisville by 7. They win at Stanford by 30. They win at Duke by one.
They beat Pitt who's terrible now they beat Boston College, they win at Virginia and then they win at home against Cal. And again, I have nothing against SMUI. Love the fact that SMU is in the the hunt here. I don't understand what the argument would be. I still don't understand what the argument is for SMU being
ahead of Indiana right now. I absolutely do not see a pathway for SMU to claim a playoff spot if they can't beat Clemson. But you kind of want if you're Indiana. I think you kind of want Clemson to beat SMU for the seating because Clemson will be below Indiana in the pecking order regardless of what happens if they get in SMU. If they beat Clemson, we'll move ahead of Indiana or stay ahead of Indiana, depending on what
the poll looks like this week. Yeah, I would also just say too I I sometimes the when you start doing game to game, you know, you could theoretically look at Indiana similarly. But I'll just say strength of schedule is a metric that kind of blends all this together. The season is now over. SMU strength of schedule is 75th. Ours is 65th, right. So we both have the same record. We played a tougher, you know, strength of schedule. You know, the the strength of schedule thing.
I mean, talk about just an absolute embarrassment to the profession of of sports journalism. What it what ESPN has tried to do with the strength of schedule argument. Just absolute embarrassment is what they should be feeling at at college football headquarters at ESPN. All of that talk about strength of schedule, comparing in like incomplete schedules at the end of October, in the beginning of November and trying to use that as a wedge argument against Indiana being in the College
Football Playoff draw. Just absolutely disgusting on the part of ESPN doing that. Here's what it ended up as. OK, the Oregon Ducks, the number one team in the country, their strength of schedule number is 60, right? Indiana's the 65th. Indiana play the equivalent of Oregon scheduled this year if you take it in totality. Notre Dame 57th in strength of schedule, only 8 spots off Indiana, as you mentioned, Indiana 10 spots higher in strength of schedule than SMU. Indiana 65th in strength of
schedule. Boise State. We haven't heard a thing about Boise State's strength of schedule. All we've heard was, oh, they had a great close loss at Oregon, 86th in strength of schedule. Scott 86th and you can go down the list. I mean, you know, Miami 55th, 10 spots ahead of Indiana. They're right in the same
ballpark. So this is where, you know, this entire argument against Indiana has been so disingenuous, not just because of the the misuse of statistics out of context, but also because strength of schedule should really only matter when you're looking at the totality of a team's season and trying to figure out how well did they do against who they played. There's a metric for that as well, which is strength of record. Indiana's 8th in the country in strength of record.
These are the things that I think have been the most disturbing about this process. Fortunately, Indiana has put themselves in a position where I don't think it's going to matter, but this is these are things we're going to remember as we move forward. Oh, no, I and it's, it's what's annoyed me the most is I've said this a multiple times. They, they framed the discussion. They anchored, I'm sorry, they anchored Indiana as a bad
strength of schedule team. And that just became what everybody anchored to. And then it just stuck. But it's because, you know, yes, at one point before we had played Michigan and Ohio State, we were 120th or something, but we hadn't played everybody. And they would show that stat without ever mentioning the fact that, yes, when we play Ohio State, no matter what the result is, it's going to be cut in half and we're going to go from 120 to 50. So let let's just like, let's wait.
And like, part of the reason Penn State had a better strength of schedule is they had played Ohio State. Nobody brought that up. It just became a game to game comparison, which that's so subjective because then you could be like, oh, well, Michigan didn't look great and they didn't look great against it. You can start, you can parse that out however you want. And they did it because you saw every time we looked good, it's
like, well, that team sucks. And every time we looked, didn't, you know, blow someone's doors off, suddenly the fact that we blew other doors off became a negative to us because like, well, they normally win 47 to nothing. Why are they only beating Michigan by 8? It's like, well, you don't win every game like that. No, it's, it's very disingenuous. And the fact that they never caveated, you know, Indiana's
going to get down. Let's look at a projected end of year strength of schedule and see where everybody lines up or just, you know, it it it, it felt very one sided. I didn't, I didn't like it either. But I'm with you and you know, we should be 9 this week. There's no question like Miami should be below us. There's nobody who's going to jump us. They're probably not going to put us ahead of SMU, even though
the the stats have changed. You know, our strength of schedule is better, theirs is worse. We have the same record. We play in a better conference. I I don't know why but the only SMU question I do have is they join the ACC. They didn't take any TV money. This was a very minor. Question, They didn't take any TV money. If they make the College Football Playoff, are they allowed to take that money? I'm just I'm curious. They are, They are.
It's a good question. But it's because the that money is a different pot of money. Yeah. So it's, it's one of those things where the, the, the yearly payout that the ACC gets from ESPN is a separate pot of money because it's negotiated separately than the CFP money. And so that's where yes, they would be able to take them. That's a good question though. It's interesting, but. They're playing for their paycheck.
Yeah, the Ari Wasserman from on three just published his bracketology or so to speak, the bubble watch. So he has the last four in again. Sorry for my voice, folks. He has the last four in as Ohio State, Tennessee, Indiana and SMU. And I mean, he's probably right because you know, you think about it, you've got you, you know that you've got your 4 conference champions who get in ahead there.
His first four out this is. And his, his capsule about Indiana is interesting because it feeds right into the first four out. I'll read from this. Had there not been a collection of shocking results, Indiana could have found itself in a position where it was being compared to two loss SEC teams with perceived quality wins. But Alabama and Ole Miss losing last weekend paved the way for the Hoosiers to crack the field. I I think that's accurate.
And it's, it sucks that that's what the the perception has been, but that's ultimately what did it.
All these results that happened over the last two weeks helped Indiana get themselves into a position where they don't have to be reasonably compared to Alabama, Ole Miss, South Carolina. So those are three of the first four out that Wasserman has in his the fourth team he has out right now is Miami. And I think that that's a really interesting one to think about because, you know, ultimately you, you end up with a situation where Miami, if they if they
that loss to Syracuse, which is a bad loss, if that really is disqualifying, then Indiana should feel even safer at this point. And again, you want to root for Clemson to beat SMU for the seating purposes. So in this bracket, he he would have Ohio State, Tennessee is the 8-9 Penn State, UNLV is the 512.
That's assuming that UNLV beats Boise State, Indiana, Georgia as the 10/7 and then SMU, Notre Dame as the 611 with the the Champions it with the byes being Oregon, Arizona State, Texas and Clemson. Now obviously if Boise State wins in the Mountain West final, they would take that spot of Arizona State and they would flip that with with UNLV. We'll see some of these other ones I think. I think Heather Dimich's projection was somewhat similar.
On ESPN. She had Oregon, Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, Georgia, Ohio State. I think Ohio State's way too high there at 6, Tennessee, SMU and then Indiana at 9th with Boise State, Miami and Alabama below. I just, you know, here's the thing that's interesting that. Paul Finebaum has his.
It's Texas one, Georgia 2, Tennessee 3, Alabama 4, South Carolina 5A and M6 LSU 7. You know, Oregon's on the bubble, which I I can see like they've, you know, have they really stuck up to, you know, the Florida, you know, four and four? Sorry. Yeah, I look. So I don't know how they sort out all of those teams that are going to be in that morass of two and three lost teams down at the bottom.
I just at this point, I think Indiana with such a convincing victory with their metrics looking good, with the fact that they're eighth in FPI, you know, or 10th and FPI, sorry, the fact that their efficiencies across the board are still among the best in the country. I I don't.
And again, 11 and one team out of one of the two power conferences like I just, I also, you know, if it was the SEC fighting to get, you know, you know, a three an Ole Miss team in I could see that being a problem. But this is basically against other conferences now, like you're looking at the ACC And so I, I could see the SEC you're saying like, look, I get it. Like we, we, we are the 2 powers
here. I don't want to set the precedent of an 11 and one team out of our conference not making it. So, you know, let's, let's not fight this one and let's, let's screw an ACC team. Yeah. Right now, Indiana is 45% to host in the first round based upon the the CFP predictor. So again, there's a shot it's a little bit less than 5050 right now. And it would require, as we talked about those 3 results happening where Oregon kind of blows out Penn State, which is certainly possible.
I, I don't think Penn State's played an offense quite like Oregon's this year. Texas beating Georgia is, is a key part of this. And then if that happens, do you think Georgia's out? We'll see. Here's the thing. And I've been, I've been thinking about that a lot. If so, let's, let's, let's, let's game theory that out a little bit. If so, if Georgia loses, they would be 9 and three with like almost excuse me, excuse me, they'd be 10 and three.
And almost like nine and four asterisk because that Georgia Tech game like again. I mean, they're going to give them credit for it, Scott, unfortunately. Matter because it matters for us. Go ahead. So they would have lost that game, right? Alabama at 9:00 and 3:00 would be hovering there. Would they put nine and three Alabama, who beat Georgia ahead of Georgia, who was ten and three and played in the in the SEC title game, or would they
say, no, You know the I don't. I mean there's always the scenario where they're like, oh, we'll put both of them in. Does that screw one of the the ACC teams out of a bid? There's a lot down there. I think that's really fascinating to to kind of work through. Texas beats Georgia. Georgia should be below us. You would think, yes. I mean, that's it's like it's losses matter until they don't. You know, your strength of schedule doesn't matter until it does.
No, there's no rhyme or reason to any of this. It feels like, and I this is where the committee is kind of like they've chip stacked in two different directions on this a little bit in terms of what they're gonna, what they're gonna value. And they keep giving these SEC teams credit for wins that look less and less impressive every week because of the fact that the teams that you're beating aren't going on and continuing to win games or even looking
good when they do win games. So they say that they redo the rankings every week. I guess my question is like when you redo the rankings this week, how do you in any level of seriousness? Put SMU above. Us put SMU above. How do you with any level of seriousness, really argue that all of the, the, the ways that the SEC teams have have not performed well here lately. Like with Ole Miss losing like to Florida or what, You know what not Alabama losing to Oklahoma.
How are they still 13th, 14th in the mix with this? You know, how, how is that? How is Georgia not penalized more for losing to an Alabama team that turned around and lost by the margin that it did at Oklahoma? It's just not that impressive of a win, certainly not as impressive as what they used to rank them up that high in the 1st place. So those are the kinds of things that I'm really curious to see how they sort out. And I, you know, again, if Indiana's in the top 9, I think
they're going to be fine. And then it just becomes a matter of what are the other results going to play out? And you know, where does Indiana land as a result of that? I, I, I agreed. I'll go back and look at the rankings. How, how, how how are we not 9? Like. I I like who who could jump us if my or is it is it just Miami doesn't drop below us or?
Well, no, I think I, I, I the the question is more like, you know, if, if Indiana's 9, clearly Miami's gonna drop below Indiana. There's no argument. Like I think we have to be at least nine. The question to me is 8 or 9. Like if we're ten that that's AI. Don't know where that comes from. Right, exactly.
So, you know, and then, but then the question is, and as I go back and look at my rankings, if they drop Miami entirely out of the top 11, which is where they need to be, who do they put in that spot? Because Clemson lost Alabama has not played to the level that would, that would yield that. Do they put South Carolina ahead of Alabama and Ole Miss?
Do they become kind of the, the, the, you know, so that's, that's the, that's the thing I want to keep an eye on is, is what they do with that grouping and how they handle Ohio State. If they don't, I, I don't understand. I, I will, I'm, I'm going to just say right off the bat, I'm not going to understand them not dropping Ohio State four or five spots for losing at home to a Michigan team that finished the
season 7 and five. If, if they, if the president was set, the precedent was set that they're going to drop Indiana 5 spots for losing at Ohio State, right? Then you know that it's that's. At least a six spot drop, if not 7. Yeah, I mean, and you did last week. And I'll note Penn State has the exact same loss and is 4th and has essentially like what a very, very similar set of outcomes. Like look at Penn State's overall record.
Look at who they've played. You know, look at here's Penn State's wins at West Virginia, Bowling Green, Kent State, Illinois. Fine, whatever. UCLA at USC, Wisconsin, Washington, Purdue at Purdue at Minnesota, which they you bet PJ Fleck. Sorry, sorry for my language folks, but like you think of how close we would be talking right now to Indiana hosting if Minnesota just can pull its head out of its ass at some point in the last quarter of that game. And then they beat Maryland,
who's awful 44 seven. My point being, there's no justification for Penn State being. How many spots are they ahead of Indiana right now? Six spots ahead of Indiana. There's no justification for it. Like, I can see three spots better, but 6 based on what? Yeah, no. And it's, it's, I mean, you're, you're always going to have incongruities in this because it's so tight. But but you're right.
Because then it's also like, all right, so Ohio State's going to be ranked below Penn State, but Ohio State beat Penn State at Penn State. How how is that? How are we? How are we figuring that squaring that circle? It's going to be interesting to hear the explanation. It really is. So anyway, I apologize for swearing. I'm a little fired up about all this stuff.
This is to the audience sometimes when people are sensitive and understandably so. But look, a lot to talk about this week and it should be a really fascinating set of circumstances as we're going to be watching Indiana, watching the clock and watching these rankings and, and Indiana really can't do anything else. And all they can do is watch what happens around them at this point. But I like the vantage point from where they are doing that
watching and it's exciting. I'll say this large picture, I was thinking of this last night and I'm, I'm obviously IU fan trying to look at things from a positive angle. So this is definitely positive viewpoint. But, you know, if we have to go on the road in the first round of the CFP, there's a, you know, the the positive way to look at it is we went out and did that at Ohio State. So you've had that moment of playing in a place like that.
And it's very hard to replicate that kind of noise in that environment. You know, like you saw videos before the before the week at Ohio State, then playing, you know, noise Memorial Stadium. It it's tough to do that in reality. And a lot of the trouble we had was snap count and doing a silent count and having issues with that. And then you had, you know, two or three mistakes that kind of shifted the game.
Seeing how crisp we looked last night and seeing again, Rourke's passing kind of coming back together, it it does feel like, all right, We, we now know how to handle a situation like that. We are a little bit more prepared this time when we go into South Bend OR Happy Valley or even, you know, Athens, We now know what we have to do snap count wise. We're going to have two different. We're going to be even more prepared for this. And you know, we we know what kind of plays we can run.
We have a quarterback who's now three weeks more healthy. You know, I'm I'm much more optimistic going into those games now, oddly, after having that experience at Ohio State, because looking back, it wasn't a complete curb stopping. It was a couple of plays that turn the tide and we could not return the tide. But it was based on probably just not having that kind of environment before.
And then, you know, after that you're neutral sites like if you if you get through that, it's a neutral site environment where all those things wash away. And and I think neutral sites favors Indiana so much more against probably every team that isn't named Oregon in this. Field yeah, well, there's just there's a lot of you you mentioned, you mentioned precedent, you mentioned like the the committee handling the
top 12 here. Yes, they've ranked the top 25 historically, but like historically, anything after 6 or five didn't really matter. It really matters here and, and the the and not just from an Indiana perspective, but it matters because what precedent are you setting? Like to me, it's like you asked about Georgia. Like Georgia, a three loss team should not be hosting a playoff game. That's a great.
You know, a three loss team should not be hosting a playoff game and and you can go through the list with some of these other ones. It's like, do you really want to give, you know, like Tennessee has two losses do do they deserve to host a playoff game? So now it gets into this whole idea, so much of this narrative, which has been stupid to participate in, but we've had to, so much of it has been based on what? Who deserves what, right? Indiana doesn't deserve to be there.
They haven't played a tough enough schedule or SMU doesn't deserve to be there, whatever. But So what? What are we basing the deserve off of at this point? And that's really going to be fascinating to watch how it plays out because this is this becomes the precedent that you now set for going into the next playoff cycle. And teams will adjust based upon what they see out of this. So you almost have a responsibility as a committee.
And this is where, like, the arguments about Indiana's schedule are so disingenuous because it's like you look at what the schedule was supposed to be at the start of the season. This point's been made many
times. What you have the defending national champion on your schedule, the defending runners up, a consensus top five team in Ohio State, a Nebraska team that everybody seems to have forgotten was anointed as the team that was like, you know, Matt Rule was going to bring them back to nine wins and they were going to be a contender in the Big 10 they were on the schedule part of. Our game, part of the reason, you know, big news Sunday was here was for them. New Saturday was for them
because there were five and one. Not us, you know, I mean, Maryland was supposed to be. A6 win team, A7 win team. Michigan State was supposed to be in that mix. Jonathan Smith was going to come in and and get that ship righted. You know, UCLA was, I think projected in some circles to win five or six games. They ended up winning five games.
But my point is like the committee has to be real careful about like, oh, you didn't, you didn't have a tough enough schedule because Indiana did everything that they could against the schedule that they had. And they're one blemish. Was in a road environment where they actually played really good defense and their special teams fell apart. It's like, are you going to punish them for that? Sorry.
And just real quick along the same line, you know, so that you know, Indiana has no control over a big 10 schedule. Obviously it has control over the non conference. And yes, our non conference was soft. But if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, it's really like unbelievably use your word disingenuous to say, Hey, an Indiana team that is historically awful is coming off of a coaching change on a three win, four win season.
You should go schedule the toughest non conference you can like you once you go to Alabama first week. Like no, we need to rack up wins. Like nobody seems to care that Minnesota always does it. You know that they play a bunch of soft cakes like the you know, this season came out of the blue for a lot of us. Yes, theoretically maybe playing Louisville in the first 3 weeks would have been better, but that would have we discussed that ad nauseam when we got out of that contract.
That was the right choice. And our history is littered as we've talked about many times, our non conference being too over scheduled. So to look at us and be like and and by the way, football non conference schedules are two 3-4 years in advance. Like it's not you can't just say net really couldn't turn it on a dime and change it in, you know, when he gets to the job in like in April, like, yeah, we're pretty good. Maybe we should flip this for,
you know, hey, what do you know? Boise State's got an opening. There's not that doesn't work that way. So it's it's really, really unfair to say we should have had a tougher non conference because I we will argue that with anybody. It's like, no, we shouldn't. We're not a good, we were not a good team coming into this. We're having a new coach with all new players. We need a very short runway. We are not one of these top teams. So we'll see what happens.
It's gonna be a lot of fun to talk about throughout the course of the week, a lot of discourse. I'm curious to see what everybody else's thoughts are on this. So it's Tuesday, obviously. And then is it the Tuesday after? Is that the final? No, no, no, the no. The final reveal, I believe, is actually Sunday. Oh, OK, so. Tuesday and then so Tuesday and so everybody's well, it's going to be tough from a programming perspective this week. Bison chat, which as most of you know is on Tuesdays.
The well, the CFP reveal show is going to be happening in the middle of the Indiana Sam Houston State basketball game. Like the game starts at 7:00, I think and the the draws at 7:30. So we may have to do Bison chat during the IU basket. You know what, Scott? You know what we're going to do. I'm going to tell you right now. We may, we may not, unfortunately, have Emily Fox or Joe Cronin joining us. And I don't know if Scott's available.
It might be time to do a live watch of the IU basketball game and then simultaneously do a live watch of the CFP reveal. We haven't done a live watch for basketball in a while. We've been kind of avoiding that lately for some reasons, but maybe that's what we'll do. I think the the people deserve that at this point. Let's talk offline. No, I'm in for part of it. Yes, and.
I was. Thinking like how I don't want to make give you something you might have to cut, but it would it would just be funny if you're dolson just like whatever. No, don't say it because I can't cut it out of the video. OK, thank you. It's not that bad. But it's not no, no, no. Anyway, all right, well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up. We are very thrilled, Indiana. Great regular season. Looking forward to seeing what happens.
I know it's amazing. 11 and one. And as somebody pointed out earlier on Twitter, Indiana still never had A10 win season in program history. Yeah, they've had a nine win season and an 11 win season. Once I get it, I get it. That's great. We'll. Come back and get the ten wins next year or something like, yeah, like make that, make that a clause in Sigdaddy's contract. Like you had A10 win season on the dot. It's amazing. The one.
Last thing I want to say on the scheduling stuff before we go and I I meant to connect the dot on this and then I just, I didn't in an era where all of these conference schedules are so tremendously imbalanced, how do you punish teams or how do you reward teams based upon who they play and who they don't play? When some teams don't get the chance to play other teams, you know, it's like SMU is going to the ACC title game. They didn't play Miami in the
regular season. They didn't play Clemson in the regular season. You know, Miami's going to the conference title game. They didn't play Clemson in the regular season and nor did they play SMU. Indiana didn't get a chance to play the Big 10 teams that might have boosted their resume even more. They didn't get a chance to play Illinois. Penn State did. We don't know if Indiana could have very easily beaten Illinois. They didn't get a chance to play Iowa.
I'm I'm thankful for that, but that, you know, that's a team that would have looked impressive as a scalp. They didn't get a chance and you can go down the list. I mean, go, go to the go to Texas's schedule. They didn't get a chance to play certain teams in the SEC. So do we never got a Texas Alabama game. We never got a Texas Tennessee game.
So this is where I the committee, this is almost to the point where the 12 team playoff format may not be sufficient because of how unbalanced all of the schedules are. We got so used in college football to saying, well, look, these are just the best teams in this conference and so they'll get in and we'll pick what we think is the best at large.
Well, it gets harder when you get further down because you just can't do apples to apples comparisons on these teams because many of them haven't played each other even in their own conferences. And so it's like is is Clemson a better team than Miami on the balance of the season? Probably not. But Clemson's going to the ACC title game and Miami isn't and, and that so that never gets resolved. And it's not great to sit there and try to figure it out with a bunch of people talking in a
room. So maybe 16 teams is better than 12 because you are going to leave a couple of teams out that probably are good enough to play in the playoff but didn't have the schedule in front of them to be able to do so. No, it's a great point. And I will also say it, it's going to continue and probably get worse. Like like the idea of you're getting with larger schedules, having more teams playing kind of the underbelly of a conference schedule is going to be more likely than not.
You're going to have it again in future years. And if you go to an 18 or A20 team big 10 in SEC, it's going to be even more exacerbated. Like you're just you're going to have more variance in schedules and you're going to have a situation where a team doesn't play the top three teams in a conference at some point. And what are you going to do with it? So you you're setting precedents that are important. And if you if you say, well, it's got to all be non conference, like that's absurd.
Like if you're going to have these unbelievable conferences where there's a chance you could be playing Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon all in the same year, you can't load up your non conference with a bunch of teams. And look at Ole Miss, they played, you know, Ferdum, Middle Tennessee State and Georgia Southern. I mean, they didn't play anybody in the non conference. Like I think you're going to see teams having less non conference
schedules as this goes along. So I I agree with you, but I think the idea it's it's going to be even worse moving forward. So they have to figure it out and probably just go to 16 teams sooner rather than later. Yeah. Anyway, we'll, we'll officially wrap up the podcast and thank you all for sticking with us through the regular season. We had a blast. We're looking forward a lot more
programming to come. This week we will talk about the College Football Playoff when it's revealed on Tuesday or at least the up updated rankings and certainly we'll be keeping an eye on things as we go into conference championship week. And man should be should be quite a week for Indiana football. Just anticipation waiting to see how everything falls. Scott, it's always a pleasure talking with you and folks be sure to subscribe to us on the back home network YouTube channel.
Be sure to subscribe on sub stack. And we'd like to thank our presenting sponsor, Home Field Apparel, as always, for their patronage throughout the course of the season. For Scott, I'm Galen, This is Crimson cast. We will catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the Bison. Stay never daunted. So long, everybody.