In the last possible moment, IU makes its best possible College Football Playoff argument

Posted by author December 1, 2024 Football

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BLOOMINGTON – There was an irony that settled over Memorial Stadium on Saturday night, in the afterglow of Indiana’s historic 66-0 Old Oaken Bucket victory against rival Purdue.

The No. 10 Hoosiers spent the best part of four quarters playing like a team hell-bent on proving to the College Football Playoff selection committee — and anyone else paying attention — they deserved to be included in this inaugural 12-team field. They battered and hounded Purdue in ways this rivalry has never seen before, and may wait decades to see again. When the game was over, coach Curt Cignetti even acknowledged a measure of value in “style points” this time of year.

And then it didn’t matter. Texas beat Texas A&M, eliminating the Aggies from serious contention just hours after Syracuse’s win over Miami likely dealt the Hurricanes the same fate. There will be tiebreakers and champions to sort out in the Big 12 and elsewhere, but all their behavior thus far suggests we can probably work out the bulk of the field as the committee will see it in two weeks’ time, with IU included.

Thus, the irony. Not that Indiana had done enough to prove itself worthy just as it no longer needed to, but that the Hoosiers had made their most compelling case in the last moment necessary:

In a season when seemingly everyone else bar Oregon stumbled over obstacles of their own creation, the Hoosiers were America’s most business-like team. Every time they faced an opponent they were expected to beat, they did, often with the streak of ruthlessness that rolled the numbers up so impressively Saturday night.

“We have a very consistent standard of performance,” Cignetti said postgame. “I think our assistant coaches and players do a nice job, a good job coaching them, and we preach about playing one play at a time, first play to last, like it’s 0-0, regardless to the competitive circumstances, never too high, never too low, physical, relentless, smart, disciplined, poised. Our guys buy into that, and we’ve been fairly consistent this year.”

That answer is as repetitive as Indiana (11-1, 8-1 Big Ten) has often been this season.

Not to its fans, who once again turned out in the tens of thousands Saturday only this time in the cold and snow, selling out Memorial Stadium one last time and cheering their fresh heroes into a postseason no one outside the Hoosiers’ North End Zone facility saw coming.

They were treated to another vintage performance, perhaps the pick of the bunch.

Indiana outgained Purdue 582-67. The Hoosiers passed for six touchdowns and turned the Boilermakers over five times. Kurtis Rourke matched a single-game program record in this series in tossing those scores. Five receivers caught at least one touchdown pass. The one that caught two, Elijah Sarratt, set an IU Bucket-game record with 165 receiving yards.

Purdue (1-11, 0-9) only has two wide receivers with more yards this season.

Virtually anywhere you went in the box score the numbers reflected a measure of dominance IU has not previously known against Purdue, the Hoosiers’ margin of victory their simplest, greatest and most emphatic expression thereof.

Indiana beat Western Illinois 77-0 in Week 2 and Purdue 66-0 in Week 16 and in a uniform-blind staging of the two games, it would be hard to tell which team plays in the Big Ten and which plays in the FCS. If the Boilermakers were not a conference opponent IU would probably be docked points by the committee for putting them on the schedule.

But the point wasn’t really that Indiana beat Purdue. It was that Indiana has done this all season.

“Most of the games we played with, we’ve handled the opponent pretty well,” Cignetti said.

The Hoosiers have played two games that weren’t won by at least two scores, the five-point win over Michigan two weeks ago and the 38-15 loss at Ohio State last weekend.

Their margin of victory in their other 10 games this season goes, chronologically: 24, 77, 29, 38, 14, 17, 49, 14, 37, 66.

No, IU has not played the country’s most difficult schedule. And they’ve paid for that at least to some extent, their metrics and their resume depressed compared to some of their Playoff peers.

What Indiana has done, however, that most of those teams have not, is simple: Whenever Indiana has been called upon to prove itself Playoff worthy, it has rarely left little doubt.

The Hoosiers beat Washington by two scores without their starting quarterback. They battered a Nebraska team that was at the time 5-1 and wound up stumbling through the back half of its schedule trying to pick up the pieces from a 56-7 loss in Bloomington. IU beat Michigan at home, something Ohio State can’t claim.

And compared to other perceived Playoff bubble teams, the Hoosiers have never hit the potholes on their way up the mountain.

Ole Miss (Kentucky), Alabama (Vanderbilt, Oklahoma), Texas A&M (Auburn) and Miami (Georgia Tech, Syracuse) all frittered away their candidacies at various points by losing games they should not. Argue all you want about the strength of these various opponents or how we measure strength of schedule or whether it just means more some places than others. The basic fact is those teams, presented with games they could not afford to lose, lost them, and Indiana did not.

In fact, Indiana rarely looked like it would either. A six-quarter stretch against Michigan and Ohio State aside, the Hoosiers have been arguably the most dominant Power Four team in America this fall.

One of the metrics reflected on ESPN’s team resumes page is something the Worldwide Leader calls average win probability, or “win probability rank adjusted for the chance an average FBS team would control games from start to end the way this team did.” Out of all the analytics ESPN presents on that page, IU ranks highest here, at No. 4 nationally, and the Hoosiers are likely to climb given Ohio State’s loss this week.

“I think we had the largest margin victory of any team in the country up until last week,” Cignetti said. “I’m not sure where we were coming into this game because obviously we did not beat Ohio State.”

They didn’t, and that will be reflected on selection Sunday when — when, not if — the Hoosiers are slotted into college football’s first-ever 12-team Playoff. Because they cannot win the Big Ten championship game they cannot secure a bye, and even hosting is likely off the table for them at this point.

It is virtually impossible, however, to imagine them outside the field now. Not just because results elsewhere helped separate wheat from chaff, but because the last time it was asked to, this IU team took the field and proved its unrelenting dominance.

There is no better argument for this team’s Playoff credentials. And at this point, nothing else needs said.

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