Evil Empire Goes Down!
- Thread starter kaTNap
- Start date
We'll see, but if Ohio State wins it all, they'll probably look at this as a necessary loss similar to how they played after the Michigan loss last year (but this Indiana is way better than Michigan last year).
They need to be a lot better than they were last night.
Also wouldn't be shocked if we get an Indiana v Ohio State rematch later.
They need to be a lot better than they were last night.
Also wouldn't be shocked if we get an Indiana v Ohio State rematch later.
OSU played Michigan in an energy draining game last Saturday. IU easily beat Purdue on Friday night and got to spend Saturday focusing and scouting OSU. As IU undergrad, NU Grad school Alum and NU season ticket holder, I was glad IU finally won the BIG. Still OSU defense had another great game and IU should hold the celebration until winning a playoff game. OSU is still favorite and deserves the 3 seed.
I don’t think that’s the reason. OSU plays Michigan every single year before the Big Ten championship. They are aware of what it takes and they have more experience playing in the championship game than anyone. It’s pretty much an annual routine.
All discussion around that game and Cignetti and OSU and the playoffs aside, IU has just finished off a completely outrageous and maybe unprecedented achievement.
Yeah this is literally greatest ever turnaround.
We obviously had our moment in the 90s with Barnett and the Rose Bowl, but in some ways this is even bigger than that which makes it all the more astounding.
The only thing that maybe makes it not the greatest ever is the transfer era makes turning over an entire roster much more possible. In 94 we had to build the roster with entirely our usual set of totally unheralded castoff high school recruits and then develop them up. We had to find like an outrageous percentage of all the diamond in the roughs in the whole country and get them to come to NU and make em great. That’s absurdly impossible to do. Cig at least had the advantage of having top 5-10 money and being able to guy buy all the guys he wanted.
Again, it’s probably the craziest turnaround in the history of the sport, but these are the only distinctions left to discuss
Some have said that the reduction of scholarships from 95 to 85 in 1992 led to players who normally would head to bigger programs migrating to schools like NU. So, even though I absolutely agree our achievement was great, it also followed from changes in NCAA rules.
The thing is that you still have to execute. Brian Kelly was throwing around (probably more) money at LSU and that went nowhere. Penn State brought back everyone with tons of NIL payments and they crashed and burned.
Everyone's trying to throw money into CFB right now to grab players, but only really Indiana and Texas Tech have done it especially effectively this year with the results they've produced.
It's still hard for a non-traditional power to grab those same players.
And consider this, it was a former NU QB who was one of those who spearheaded players being paid. So some credit for IU's success goes to NU.
Yes, the Indiana story is a great one, but I don't think it is greater than what Gary Barnett did. He came to Northwestern less than a decade after a 34-game losing streak. The team had gone 0-11 in 1989 with its last two losses that year being by 76-14 and 63-14. Indiana's recent history had not been that dismal. Four years ago, they were 6-1 in the rugged Big Ten East and nearly knocked off Ohio State in Columbus. Then, there are the facilities. Indiana has an indoor practice facility right next to the football stadium, which is on campus. Gary had no indoor facility, an aging Dyche Stadium, an antiquated locker room and outdoor practice field, both off campus, and ,of course, he had much higher academic standards to deal with than Cignetti did. Cig turned things a lot quicker and may win a national title but some of that is a reflection of the new transferring rules.
From what I've seen, outside the top 10 (11-15th) when it comes to their nil funding.
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Well, in an interview none other than Cig stated that some of those things were the reasons he was confident that his team would win.