You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
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and Clavio joining you. It is Monday the 18th.
It's Ohio State week for Indiana, one of the biggest
games in the history of the sport for Indiana coming up on
Saturday, a top five matchup in the Horseshoe as Indiana
attempts to silence the haters and put themselves in a position
where a College Football Playoff berth is an auto ironclad lock.
I would say it's it should be close to that already if people
are thinking straight. But we know how college football
is. We can't assume anything.
So anyway, we decided, and by the way, I mean me, who's going
to go ahead and jump on, do a live show for about 30-45
minutes, wanted to tackle some questions that people had out
there and get things kicked off on the right foot.
As you know, we got a lot to do this week.
We got guests coming up later on this week, we got preview
podcast, we got the whole shebang going on and excited to
talk to you all today. And we're going to try to keep
the content flowing throughout the course of the week if we
can. So I've got some questions that
are queued up, but if you've got some questions you want to head
over to YouTube channel, back home network YouTube channel, go
ahead and throw them into the comments there.
I can pull those up. I can address those directly.
And obviously I've got some earlier ones and if you're
listening after the fact, at least you're getting the benefit
of hearing the podcast. So you know, it's always not
lost. But if you're curious, if you
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All right, we don't have forever, so let's go ahead and
jump in to some of the various things that people have got.
We had Damon Bruce, our our good buddy Damon.
Not even Cam Cameron could ruin that logo, which he did.
It kind of a duality there. I always say people, people, you
know, it was called the evil Oval for a long time.
I got it. I got it over my shoulder.
Where did it go? There it is like I can't.
There we go that, believe it or not, that is actually from the
set of the old Cam Cameron show that was gifted to me about six
or seven years ago by a good friend of the program.
So we got some history here in Crimson Cast, Studio B, lots of
Oval all over the place. And I always tell people like,
we won two national championships with the Oval,
just happened to be in soccer, which still matters, obviously.
Let's dive in and talk about some of the items that people
have been asking about. It's been a busy day on Twitter.
It's been a busy day in terms of the the discourse, I guess you
could call it, or the the engagement farming, the the
trolling that's going on. You know, we got Ryan Rosillo.
I decided to wade into the fray and, you know, Pooh Pooh
Indiana's schedule, whatever. I don't know, I want to kind of
pump the brakes on everybody a little bit.
There's a lot of of stuff going back and forth and and it's fun,
you know, and I just think it's important to remember a couple
of things. SEC fans on Twitter are not
going to argue with you in good faith.
And I'd also like to note that at this point, they are wish
casting. Now if the committee comes out
with their rankings this next day on Tuesday and switches
everything around and drops Indiana to like 11th or or 12th
in the rankings for no reason having not played, then I think
we got beef. But until then.
You know, what's hilarious to me is that most of the SEC
discourse, if those who haven't been following along on Twitter,
you're you're lucky. I would argue what we got is a
lot of SEC fans being like, yeah, Indiana's schedule sucks
and they haven't played any real teams.
And they'd go like, you know, four and six against an SEC
schedule and stuff like that. It's, it's the, it's the same
stuff that we've heard before. It's just been real loud.
And it's been interesting because the national media
started to pick up on it. And this is the one spot where I
do get a little concerned. I I I'm not worried about what
randos on Twitter say, but I do worry about the framing that's
starting to penetrate some of the national media that cover
this. You know, we've heard it
obviously from Heather Dennett, the CFP reporter.
We've heard it from Ryan Rosillo.
We've heard. It from Paul Finebaum, which you
would expect, but you know, the one thing that that does concern
me a little bit and we've seen it play out this way with other
schools in college football is you repeat a narrative enough
times and it starts to become the perceived reality.
And and the committee people are they're still human beings.
They are susceptible to those things.
And I'm not saying that the SEC people need to shut up.
They can say whatever they want. I do think that jumping back
into the fray and arguing a counterpoint because there's
several very good counterpoints with all of this schedule stuff
with Indiana is actually a logical thing and more people
should get involved in it. I'll be honest, and I've said
this on Twitter a couple of times.
I'm wondering where Tony Petiti is right now, the Big 10
commissioner, because we had Greg Sankey out there, you know,
doing what Greg Sankey normally does and what he should be
doing, which is pumping up his own conference.
Big 10's got to get on this. Big 10 has a vested interest in
getting at least as many SEC, at least as many playoff teams as
the SEC does. And one of my arguments has been
I don't think that the committee is going to willingly put like 5
or 6 SEC teams in at the expense of they're only being like 3 Big
10 teams in. But I do start to worry about
the narrative being spun and repeated and repeated without
any counter. And I'm not seeing any counters
right now from people that matter.
So this is where the Big 10 commissioner really needs to
kind of wade into the fray and start defending his team, just
like I would have suggested that he would defend Penn State in a
similar circumstance. Like there's, there's nothing.
There's so many things about the SEC argument that are wrong.
Primarily among them is that all of these teams that you know
have one good win or or maybe even 2 good wins that that
should somehow wipe out the losses.
That they've got. Ole Miss losing at home to
Kentucky, Tennessee losing on the road at Arkansas.
You know, there there's just there's a a bunch of different
results that we've seen that not just they don't just Pierce the
bubble of the teams that are competing for the College
Football Playoff spots, but it kind of Pierce the bubble of
this idea that the SEC is this all dominant conference that
everybody is just significantly worse than.
And so I'd like to see more coming from Big 10 related
sources pushing back on that. I get the feeling I'm going to
be waiting for a while. This is something the Big 10 has
not done well historically. So, you know, obviously that
just leaves Indiana needing to go in and win the game or at
least play very close. And we'll talk a little bit
about that as we move forward in this in this in this
conversation. But as Randy points out in the
comments, Indiana has broken college football discourse.
It's hilarious. And it really is funny to me.
It is funny that Indiana of all teams, has created this vortex.
I mean, and it's only mid November.
I mean, there's normally some sniping about what's going on in
the playoff, but this has gotten to a ridiculous level.
And so I, I do think that it's, it's interesting kind of
watching all of this playing out.
And obviously what really matters is what the committee is
saying and doing. And I still believe that we know
what we're looking at is a scenario where Indiana, even if
they lose the Ohio State game, is going to be fine there.
There's an interesting thing, and this was brought to my
attention by our friend Andy Witchery, who I think some of
you are are familiar with. Andy wrote for on three.
He wrote for IU Sports Media for many years when he was a
student, but he went through and looked at in the College
Football Playoff ranking era. So, you know, basically from
2014 onward, if you look at all of the Power 5 or Power 4
conference teams during that time period, where did the 11
and one teams land in the midst of things?
And what's interesting is that, you know, in a four team
playoff, you had multiple 11 and one teams not make the 14
playoff. But if you go through and look
at the totality of the power five teams that finished eleven
and one, here's who they who they were and and where they
finished. Ohio State in 2016 finished
third in the poll. So they made it or in the the
standings in 2015, you had Ohio State finished 7th that year.
So they didn't make the four team, but Oklahoma at 11 and one
was 4, Alabama at 11 and one in 2017 was was 4th.
Ohio State in 2022 was fourth. Baylor in 2014 was fifth.
Notre Dame in 2021 was fifth. TCU, as I mentioned in 2014 was
6th and then Ohio State in 2015 and 2023 at 11 and one was 7th.
So, you know, you can look at those and I think you can see
there's a precedent here where the committee, for whatever
criticisms they've had, they do respect 11 and one teams that
are, you know, in power conferences.
This isn't something they just sweep under the rug.
They're not, you know, we haven't seen situations like,
oh, I'm sorry, strength, the schedule wasn't good enough.
It's always been the number of wins versus the number of losses
and Indiana's put themselves in a really good position with that
as they move forward. So that's why I am not nervous.
It's why I'm not flipping out. Obviously I want to see Indiana
win this weekend and, and I think they've got a really good
chance of doing it. But I think it's important to
keep in mind that it's not the end all be all if they don't win
because historically the committee has not said, oh,
there's an 11 and one team, we're going to put them 13th or
12th or whatever the number is. That's just not how it's gone
over the course of the time that the College Football Playoff
committee has been in existence. So just something to keep in
mind as we dive in here. Some interesting question marks.
So like, let me just pick up on this a little bit, Tanner
Etheridge asked. I would like to hear about
Indiana's schedule and the angle that a two loss SEC team is
undeniably worth more for the playoff or more worthy for the
playoff. It's an unexplored angle.
Not enough people are talking about.
Is a 30 point Big 10 win really worth more than a loss to UK,
Arkansas or Vanderbilt? Answer is yes.
I mean, here's the thing, the the reality of the situation is
that most of these schedules and most of of what we're seeing in
college football right now are tremendously unbalanced.
You know, if you look at the, one of the reasons why the, the
SEC is in kind of this weird spot right now is they have a
bunch of teams that very easily could end up tied without ever
having played each other. Or, you know, you, you end up
with tiebreakers where everybody played each other once and one
loss to the other, who lost to the other, who lost to the
other. This is the product of having a
16 team league or an 18 team league and you only play a 12
game schedule and, and obviously only 9 conference games in the
big 10, only 8 conference games for the SEC.
And you know, so I think the the argument that, oh, we beat, you
know, so and so mid tier SEC team, hence that is better than
blowing out an opponent in the big 10.
It that's not really how win probabilities work.
It does matter to win games. And if you look at
statistically, if you added up all the games that Indiana has
won so far this year, all 11 think they have like a 5% chance
of actually winning all of those games.
And we see over and over again now you know, when when, when
Ole Miss is at home dropping a game to a Kentucky team that's
only 46th in FPI. You know, when we've got SEC
teams like Mississippi State that are 69th in FPI that have
lost to Toledo, teams like that, you know, to me, a a lot of this
is kind of like what happens in college basketball where you'll
get. You know, scheduling that
happens in just a certain way where everybody's power rankings
just keep lifting everybody else in the conference up.
It's not that all those teams are good, it's that they
scheduled in a way so that the floor of their strength of
schedule collectively ends up being much higher.
The Missouri Valley did this for many years.
The Mountain West has started to do it with a lot of success in
basketball and we you can do it in football.
And the SEC has been smart enough about their scheduling
that this was how they elbowed a bunch of teams out in the four
team era. They're a little more exposed in
the 12 team era because you can't just put 6 SEC teams in
that. That's just not the way that it
worked. And you know, Randy brings up a
good point. You know, the I think the way
the committee raided Miami after their loss to Georgia Tech was
telling. They only dropped five spots.
Or so that's true. And you know, right now, even if
Miami wasn't the auto bid in the ACC, they would still be in the
playoff because it, you know, if you look at their overall, the,
the ranking that they had in the CFP rankings, their 9th that
would still be in. And I look at Indiana and I'm
like, well, go down Miami schedule.
They've beaten nobody of note, and they lost a game to a
middling Georgia Tech team on the road.
Penn State, who's 4th in the CFP, one spot ahead of Indiana,
really doesn't have a more impressive win than Indiana.
I mean, if you want to argue the USC went on the road, I guess
that's AUSC team that has not. Exactly, with the world on fire,
and I'll note is not in the top 25 of the CFP rankings, but
whatever. Penn State 8 and one, their one
loss was to Ohio State and somehow they're still ranked
ahead of Indiana. Now, I would argue that Indiana
losing at Ohio State, and I'm not saying that they will, but
if they were, why would that impact Indiana negatively if it
didn't impact Penn State negatively?
If Penn State has nothing else on their resume, that ends up
being kind of the argument. And when you go to the SEC
schools? You know, the, the thing to keep
in mind is that a lot of these SEC schools, again, they're
going to have at least one more loss.
One of them won't, you know, and I'm guessing it's probably going
to be Alabama. If I had to bet, I'd say
Alabama. And you know, maybe it's Alabama
versus Georgia, or maybe it's Alabama versus Texas.
I'm not sure exactly how the tiebreakers work.
Alabama, of course, has the tiebreaker over Georgia.
But you know, Texas could still lose.
Tennessee could still lose, plausibly.
Ole Miss could still lose. So Texas A&M could still
plausibly lose, although it's kind of an apples to apples
thing with Texas. So a lot of these arguments will
suss themselves out. But I think for Indiana looking
at it and again, going off of what Randy said, Miami only
dropping four or five spots after losing that Georgia Tech
game, I think bodes well for Indiana.
And if you'll note like the the CFP rankings last week, if you
just go. Down the All you do is look at
losses and wins. It went 10 and O 8 and 1/8 and
1/8 and 1:10 and O 9 and O 8 and one eight and one nine and one.
If you get down to 10th. To Alabama at 7:00 and 2:00, and
then it goes 7 and 2 for them, eight and two for Old miss,
seven and two for Georgia. And then you've got kind of the
lesser teams on the outside looking in, like Boise State and
SMU. Maybe that's the paradigm, maybe
it's the idea that well, you know, we're willing to drop A1
loss team down some, but we also look at other metrics like
strength of record, so. That's going to be an
interesting thing to keep an eye on with the rankings tomorrow to
see what all comes out. But that would be how I would
answer some of that questioning that Tanner had at the beginning
of the of the question. As we look through some of these
other questions and comments. Yeah, Trent noting 11 and one IU
still has a better resume then everyone in the SEC besides
maybe a 10 and two Georgia. I mean, you know, look,
ultimately it comes down to like how are you going to judge it?
Are you judging it by strength of schedule, strength of record?
Who have you beaten? What type of teams have you
beaten? Indiana, you know, they have
seven wins against power for conference opponents.
Not a lot of teams in the SEC can say that.
Look it up. So that's ultimately what I
would say we need to keep in mind.
And you know, and as Tony points out here, I keep saying, the
question, who have they beat? My question in return is equally
as important. Who have they lost to?
They never have a good answer. Losses matter as well.
That's what I think is worth noting.
Like losses should matter. Losses have always mattered when
it comes to this stuff. But again, don't expect SEC fans
or SEC media to argue this stuff in any way other than
disingenuously. That's that's the essentially
the take home point with all of these things.
A lot of questions, not all of them had to do with football,
but I'm going to kind of stick, stick with some of these items
football wise. So, so John asked what in the
stats is causing a 12 point spread?
I think it's it might be actually 11 1/2 points, but what
is causing a 12 point spread in terms of of this Indiana, Ohio
State match up? It's a good question because you
know, the, the teams are actually more equal than you
might think in certain areas. And that is, you know, something
that a lot of people don't necessarily buy when you tell
them that. But when I look at the advanced
stats and, and I would advise everybody to tune in at the
like, we're going to do it Thursday.
I hope we're going to have Taylor Lehman back on.
We're going to do a bona fide preview podcast where we take
all this into account, but the big things that are contributing
to, I guess it is 3119 that was mentioned, a 12 point margin in
S&P Plus are essentially as follows.
Ohio State is third in FPI, Indiana's 11th, Ohio State's
first in S&P Plus, Indiana's 11th.
If you look at offensive and defensive stats in in all of
those, I mean Ohio State's just better than Indiana across the
board statistically in all of these items.
So like in FEI, which is another power metric, which is an
opponent adjusted data that represents scoring advantage per
possession. Ohio State's first overall in
FEI, second in offense, third in defense.
Indiana's ninth in FEI, third in offense, only 30th in defense,
although that has gotten better. You know, both of these teams
are pretty evenly matched. You know, Indiana is just like a
shade worse in certain areas. Indiana is better in offensive
pass success than Ohio State is in defending the pass.
But the same applies the other direction.
Ohio State's better passing success than Indiana is at
stopping it. Both teams are really good in.
You know, Indiana's defense is great at stopping line yards per
rush. Ohio State's great at forcing
them, and both Indiana's offense and Ohio State's defense aren't
particularly great in that category.
So when you break all of this down, Indiana's statistical
profile measures up really well against most teams.
Ohio State's just kind of the exemplar that you point to and
say, wow, that team is really good everywhere.
And that's where I would caution people a little bit about their
expectations. You know, Indiana is overmatched
physically and that's, I don't think that I'm not being
critical of Indiana, just the Ohio State's got a lot of five
stars, a lot of four stars. Indiana has neither of those
things. So just in raw physical power,
much like we saw against Michigan, Indiana's got a bit of
a disadvantage. And Ohio State on the whole has
been able to execute better, you know, in both offensively and
defensively. And I think really what it's
going to come down to to some degree is, you know, ES or
sorry, S&P Plus has Ohio State's defense as the top defense in
the country. And Indiana's offense, well,
good, is only 15th in the country.
So can Indiana have a better offensive game than what Ohio
State is able to do defensively? And you just, again, you go down
the list and you just look at what Ohio State's done
defensively. The only team they've allowed
more than 17 points to all season has been Oregon.
They let 32 points up there, but you know, their, their numbers
are impressive. 6.0 points, 14 points, 7 points, 7 points.
32171317 was Nebraska, 13 was Penn State.
Purdue was a shutout and Northwestern, they allowed seven
points. So to me, that's one of the keys
like how well can Indiana find ways to exploit whatever
weaknesses they can find in this Ohio State defense?
Can they move the ball? If they can't, and we saw them
struggle to move the ball in the second-half against Michigan,
that's a real problem. But that's where Indiana's
defense really has to step up and keep Indiana's offense in
the game, again, like we saw against Michigan.
And that's where I do think some of the notes about Ohio State's
offense are important. Like Sam notes, the offensive
line for Ohio State is not that amazing.
And that's true. They've had injuries.
They've lost 2 left tackles so far this season.
Like it's been a struggle for them, you know, and, and
ultimately, and I was talking to Taylor about this earlier today,
if you can limit what Ohio State does in the running game, which
Nebraska did quite well and actually Penn State did it
pretty well also, you do take a lot off the table for that.
You know, if you look at what Ohio State has done in terms of
running the ball, they're averaging 5.25 yards per rush,
which is really, really good. They've rushed for 18138 yards
and 22 touchdowns. So if if Indiana is going to be
competitive in this game, a lot of it will come down to very
basics. But basics against really,
really good competition, you've got to move the ball, you've got
to score touchdowns. You've got to be able to move
the ball through the air quickly to give your own offensive line
a break. And then defensively, you just
got to gum up Ohio State. You know, the it's interesting
that S&P Plus is projecting. This is a 3119 game.
I would actually say that it's probably going to be a lower
scoring game one way or the other.
And you know, I think whether or not Indiana wins or loses, the
chances are that they're going to be able to grind some of Ohio
State's attack to a halt. It's just a matter of whether
Indiana's going to be able to pick it up on their own end.
And there are some advantages for Indiana, which we'll talk
about more with Taylor. But like Randy points out, Ohio
State likes to play man on the outside.
If only we had a passing game that could exploit one-on-one
coverage. I I mean, the nice thing is
Indiana's got a nice, a good stable of receivers.
It sounds like Miles Price is going to be back.
Omar Cooper is clearly having, you know, the best season of his
young career. Elijah Serrat has struggled
lately, but is certainly a guy that you can throw the ball to.
You know, Keyshawn Williams has been a revelation here recently.
He's really become a really heavily targeted slot receiver.
And then Zach Horton most of the time is able to pull balls in
and and disrupt. But Indiana, they've lived so
much in that RPO approach. And what'll be interesting is
like how much does Ohio State pressure that versus how much do
they try to sit back? It's going to be a fascinating
chess match. And that's the kind of things I
want people to to keep in mind. That's that's ultimately where
this game is going to lie and when we'll just have to see what
happens with it all, but we'll talk more about it throughout
the course of the week. Obviously we have a a bunch of
other questions here that are, I think some of them we're going
to answer tomorrow on Bison Chat.
So first of all, I want to give you a programming update on
that. Bison Chat will be live on the
back home network at 6:45 PM tomorrow.
Myself, Joe Crone and Emily Fox going to be recapping what
happened during the bye week. We'll have sound from Curt
Signetti's press conference that happened on Monday.
We probably won't have sound from player availability on
Tuesday. It's a little too quick of a
turn around, but we will then be doing our live watch of the CFP
reveal, which happens at 7, and talking through where Indiana
lands and what the implications are as we move ahead.
So a lot of your CFP questions and things like that will try to
tackle at that point. Let me add a couple of other
ones though. Darryl Frazier asked what would
FCS playoffs look like for Division One?
Is it a well that we're we're kind of getting there And I have
AI always felt like if you're going to expand to 12, you're
going to end up expanding to 16. You know, there's a lot of
inequities in this 12 team format, not the least of which
is you're staring down the barrel right now of three of the
power conference, 4 probably seated 1-2 and three.
And then the 4th power conference, the Big 12.
I mean, there's a chance they don't even make the field.
There's no auto bids for the power conferences.
It's just, you know, who's the highest ranked champion of of
each conference in the committee's eyes.
So what I think is going to be interesting to keep an eye on as
we move forward with the playoff is let's say Boise State ends up
getting the four seed and you get a Miami team that's probably
overrated a bit as the three seed.
You're going to have really good at large teams that are waiting
there have to play an extra game and then we'll go play on a
neutral field against these conference champions.
And I'm not entirely convinced that the conference champions
are going to be the test that people think that they are.
Some of them might be, but some of them will probably not.
So it's kind of like in the NFL where when you have a like on
the fourth seed, you know, is, is often times the divisional
champion who went like nine and eight, you know, had a really
poor season. They're hosting a playoff game
against a wild card team that's won 11 or 12 games.
That's like that. That seems a little unfair.
But you know, we've always placed this premium on did you
win your conference? We used to place a premium on
did you win games? You know, that's, that's the
kind of thing that I, I think it's going to have to change.
So an FCS playoff, if you went to a 16 or even a 2014 format, I
mean, I, I think we're going to get to that pretty quickly
because everybody's going to be paranoid about being left out of
this thing. I, I don't think it's going to
stay at 1216 might be the right number.
And I think buys are kind of overrated as it is at this
point. Let's just make everybody play
the same number. A day of games would be fine
with me. The.
There was another question from Daryl.
Is there a reality where the SEC and the Big 10 break off from
the NC, the NCAA and do their own thing?
Yeah, there's a reality where that exists right now.
I don't think it's worth it. And this is where this College
Football Playoff committee is going to be interesting because
I think the the the interesting thing about this is that both
both these conferences before the season started wanted to
demand for auto bids for their conferences, which ironic if
you're Indiana thinking about that now.
It's like, yeah, that'd be nice. Let's let's have that.
But one of the things that they're going to be very
interested in is parody. Both conferences view themselves
as the superior conference. They might be begrudgingly
willing to admit that the other is an equal.
They wouldn't be willing to admit that the other was
superior. So if you think about it that
way, you can think about it from the standpoint of if the Big 10
gets snubbed and gets three teams in and the SEC gets 6,
they might be like, or five Big 10's like, OK, that's, that's
not right. We're this is not going to
happen again. And they start exploring like,
well, you know, do we need the SEC?
And never underestimate tribalism and factionalism when
it comes to college football especially.
There's a reason why all these conferences keep, you know,
realigning and and teams keep getting kicked out or bumped up.
Everybody's out for themselves. And that that applies to the
conferences as much as it applies to the teams.
So we'll have to see with all of that.
But I think it's an interesting thought process as far as what
might happen down the line. We had a bunch of questions
about Northwestern's new stadium.
Luke Bolata asked reaction to Northwestern's new stadium and
what would be your dream updates to Memorial Stadium in the
future. We had another question about
from Teddy Bit Big Bucks. A bit random, but I'm curious
your thoughts on the new Ryan Field for Northwestern and what
implications think that'll have on college sports stadiums.
I mean, The thing is, I don't know.
I don't know if it's going to have that many implications
because most of these college football stadiums are old and
have been added on to there. There are not a lot of new
stadiums, nor is there a lot of a desire to build a brand new
football stadium. I mean basketball arenas are
freaking expensive. A football stadium is I mean
that's like that's a that's that's the GDP of like a micro
state. That's a lot of money and
you're, I mean, you're going to get returns for that when you
could still upgrade the one that you've currently got.
Northwestern is kind of in a, a unique circumstance Like
Northwestern, I think, you know, private school, they've got a
limited footprint. They had a really old stadium.
I, I did not think, I mean, I've been to Ryan Field a couple
times. It was probably the least
impressive stadium in the conference, I would say.
I mean, Memorial Stadium was that way for the longest time,
but Ryan Field was right up there.
Ryan Field was really old looking and I think Northwestern
is looking at this and saying, well, gosh, we have a lot of
money. We want to create a fan
experience that's going to be consistent, sustainable.
We want to have a situation where we don't have to go get
6070 thousand people to come watch our games because we're
not going to draw that many people.
And if we do, it's going to be mostly the opposition's fans.
We saw that with Indiana, you know, almost taking over that
little 12,000 seat stadium that they play in.
So for them, it makes a lot of sense to say we're going to
build small, I think their stadiums like 35,000 or
something like that. We're going to put a bunch of
amenities in it and around it. I think that's cool looking.
I don't think it's really a great solution for a lot of the
schools out there because it it doesn't really track with the
financial realities. And Northwestern again, in a
special spot because they are private and they have a
completely different financial experience than what your
average public school is going to be dealing with.
So that would be something I would keep in mind With all of
that. Let's see.
I wanted to get to a couple of of other questions here.
So Craig Davis asks who the hell should I be rooting for and
against in the coming weeks when it comes to helping?
I use chances of receiving a spot in the College Football
Playoff. So if you look at the the best
odds right now and and where there are teams that have
questionable odds to get into the College Football Playoff.
What you want to be rooting for is teams to lose more games than
Indiana. Because it gets progressively
harder to argue that Indiana should not be in, but this two
loss or three loss team should. So the teams in particular that
I would recommend rooting against are as follows.
And I'm going to kind of go from the bottom up, but we'll start
with Ole Miss. You really need to be rooting
for Florida to beat Ole Miss. I think that that's a key and I
think it's very possible. Ole Miss, you know, they yes,
they beat Georgia at home. They got to go to the swamp.
Florida's playing much better. That is absolutely.
And we saw this with the LSU game.
That's absolutely a game that that Florida could win.
And and I think another loss for Ole Miss knocks them completely
out of the picture. They're already on shaky ground
because, A, they lost at home to Kentucky and B, they can't make
the SEC title game, so they don't have a chance to pick up
another big win. And a loss would basically leave
them on the outside looking in. Like there's no way, in my
opinion, that they would have enough of a resume to get in
with three losses. So that would be where I would
start with your wish casting, you know, with Miami, SMU,
Clemson, I don't worry too much about that group.
I think that'll play itself out. So I, I really any of those
teams, I think you don't really need to worry about their games
as they move forward. Tennessee is an interesting one.
I think you absolutely need to be rooting for Vanderbilt to
beat Tennessee in a couple of weeks.
And that's again, that that's a game that Tennessee is favored
in, but it's a game that Vanderbilt could win and that's
a rivalry game. Vanderbilt would love nothing
more than to get their seventh win or eighth win of the season,
depending how this game this week goes for them against
Texas. Or maybe it's not Texas they're
playing this week, but they they would love nothing more than to
ruin Tennessee's chance at getting into the College
Football Playoff. And the game is in Nashville, so
that's one to look at. I think you got a root for both
Army and Southern Cal or USC as the locals call it against Notre
Dame because again, Notre Dame is a threat to Indiana where,
you know, yes, Notre Dame has a worse loss, but they have a
better win. They did win at Texas A&M and
they have blown out teams the same way that Indiana has blown
out teams over the course of most of the season.
But another loss for the Irish, I don't see the argument to get
them in. That would be what I would say.
So those are those are the teams I think you should focus on.
Like I think Georgia is going to get in.
I think Texas, unless they stumble at A&M and then have to
play in the SEC title game and lose it, I don't see a route
where Texas doesn't get in at this point, even though they're
probably don't deserve it. Penn State, you know, I do think
it would be interesting if Penn State lost to Minnesota, that
that game is coming up this week.
I could see that happening. That seems like the kind of game
that Penn State loses. But Minnesota's also very
mercurial, like, you know, they went out and they they beat, you
know, USC and they've beaten a couple of other teams and then
they turn around and they lose to Rutgers.
It's like what is going on? It's the typical PJ Fleck team.
But a loss for Penn State in that Minnesota game is we're
going to be really hard for them to come back on.
So those would be the games and the and the teams that I would
look at. The one other thing I'll say is
you really do want the Big 12 champ to be 12th at best in the
poll. And so that's where I think you
got to root for Kansas against Colorado.
I think you got to root for Arizona State against BYUI.
Think you just want to get both of those teams kind of knocked
down another peg. BYU is already pretty screwed.
This would screw them even more. So now you want to hand Colorado
a loss. And again, Big 12, great example
of a league that does not have everybody play everybody else.
And it's showing up in the lack of clear tiebreaker scenarios in
that conference. So that would be what I would
suggest at this point. But, you know, it's really a
week by week thing. We are starting to coalesce
around this idea. I think, though, that being a
one loss power conference team heading into this last part of
the season when most of these teams are going to end up with
two losses or more, is a good place to be if you're Indiana
Pitt. Hoosier asks a question that's
near and dear to my heart. One of the reasons I love you
guys, meaning me and Scott, I guess, is that you've shared the
you. You have the shared experience
of long-suffering IU fans. Here's my issue right now.
How do I hold on to the wonder? I don't want to see an IU
Alabama College Football Playoff projection and not stare in
disbelief. But this sometimes happens.
Now help me hold on. So this is.
Why? I have been telling everybody
that I know enjoy the hell out of this season.
Like do everything you can to soak up every minute of every
game, every minute of every tailgate, every minute of every,
you know, post game celebration like we had coming up or coming
out of the, the, the tunnel, you know, after the Michigan game,
soak all that in. And the reason I say that is
it's never going to feel quite like this again.
That doesn't mean it's not going to be great.
You know, and I have, I am so fired up that Kurt Zignetti is
going to be here, that hopefully his staff sticks around, that
he's going to be able to build this program in the proper way.
I, I couldn't have more trust in a guy based upon what he's
already demonstrated. But you have to understand,
like, you only get to arrive once.
Once you've arrived, you've arrived and then it wears off.
You know, I mean, Indiana, people forget like they made the
Rose Bowl in 67. Everybody's excited.
That Indiana football team was still pretty good the next
couple of years. They were ranked on a couple of
occasions. They didn't have a successful
seasons, but the the afterglow with that lasted a little while
and then it kind of descended back into unfortunateness.
You know, being able to celebrate this Indiana season
thoroughly is I think the best thing you can do for yourself
because if you don't, if you're like, I'm going to, I'm going to
hold back. I'm going to wait to see when
you jump in next year. It's just not going to feel the
same. The the best analogy, and I
can't take credit for this one. This has been pointed out by a
couple of people, but think about for those of you who are
IU basketball fans, think about the difference in the feeling
between the 2011 2012 team and the 20/12/2013 team. 20/11/2012
was a team that was underrated. A lot of press didn't even
predict them to make the tournament.
I remember I predicted that they were going to get an eighth seed
and people were like, you're crazy.
They're too far away. And I'm like, we they're,
they're actually more talented than this guys.
I, I think they'll be fine. You know, the watch shot happens
and you know, there were other great moments in that season.
The win versus Notre Dame and Indianapolis, the win down in
Evansville, the win North Carolina State, the the Ohio
State win over break, the Michigan State win over break.
And then you know, there's that little bit of a low.
But that season was such a joyride because Indiana was
achieving things they hadn't achieved in a long time.
It was a likeable group of players.
The whole thing was just a good vibe. 20/12/2013 was objectively
a more talented team. It's a better team.
It's a team that was picked number one.
They were on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but there was a
tension around that team. They were expected to be good.
It wasn't quite as fun. And it doesn't mean that it
wasn't a great season to watch. And there was some tremendous
moments from that. But I do think it's important to
just remember, like, it can just be a season and suddenly your
expectations are different. So when Pitt Hoosier asks about
holding on to the wonder, this is where this season's memories,
I think, are going to be so powerful.
And look, you don't have to become a jaded, you know, self
important, entitled college football fan like so many of the
people we're seeing engaging with us on Twitter from the SEC.
You can just enjoy being good. That's perfectly allowed.
But that wonder that you're getting when Indiana's popping
up is the seven in the 710 game versus Alabama.
That's the kind of thing that you'll probably grow out of
pretty quickly, which is wild to think about.
But that's generally how these things go.
Couple other quick items for you before we wrap up.
We're we're getting close to the end of things.
Hoosier review asks Storm the field after beating Purdue.
No, absolutely not. That's that's a routine win.
That should be viewed as a routine win.
I think there's better ways to demonstrate your joy and your
support for the team. I'd love it if the fans got to
go on the field after the Purdue game.
I think that'd be awesome, especially with the players, you
know, always coming over and celebrating with the students
section. It'd be awesome to go down on
the field and kind of experience that with them.
But don't tear the goal posts down.
I guess you didn't actually say tear the goal posts down, but
when I see storm the field, that's what my interpretation of
that is. But maybe not storm the field,
but it'd be great to let the fans out on the field that they
won't do it. But it would be cool to see.
Hoosier review also asks Galen, do you have go to IU gear that
you plan on wearing into the shoe?
Have you and Scott been superstitious this year?
Have you been mixing it up? I've been mixing it up.
I've worn a bunch of different IU stuff, all home field.
Of course, you know, I've had the red script IU hoodie that's
been really handy. I've, I've worn the, the, the
kind of corso ish looking sweater that, that they put out
a couple of years ago. I, I've, I've rotated quite a
bit and I've been happy I've done that.
Now I haven't been like obsessive about not repeating,
you know, I, I just, my old thing is I want to be
comfortable. I want to be warm.
I want to be able to exhibit my fandom.
So I don't have a very ornate dress code when it comes to
going to IU games. I also, you know, I have to
tailgate before most of them. So I have to wear things that I
can move around in the cooking zone in more effectively.
So just you know, normal jeans, T-shirt combo and then if you're
if it's colder, I'll put a sweatshirt on.
That all seems to work out pretty well.
I haven't decided what I'm going to wear for the shoe yet this
week, but we'll see. Anyway, wrapping things up.
There we go. Jamie has the right idea.
Storm the field when we went in Columbus.
I like that. Let's let's keep that energy.
We're going to go to wrap this one up.
I appreciate every jumping on. We have 45 minutes here on this
podcast. We're going to have a lot more.
We've got guests from Ohio State Land joining us a couple of
different times this week. Actually.
We'll obviously have Taylor Lehman hopefully on later on
this week to talk through things.
Might have a couple of other guests.
We've got Bison chat tomorrow at 6:45.
Joe Cronin, Emily Fox going to be joining me on that.
So just stay tuned throughout the course of the week.
We'll have plenty of content as we get you ready for Ohio State
versus Indiana. So folks, keep fighting the good
fight on social media. Don't don't let those people
tell you anything other than what you know to the truth to
be, which is that Indiana is going to win in Columbus on
Saturday and getting the College Football Playoff.
Anyway, for all you folks, thank you for joining me.
I appreciate it. I'm Galen Clavio for VAC home
network. We will catch you folks.
On the flip side, bring back the Bison, stay never daunted.
So on everybody.