“Hoosiers” — the story of a small high school that wins the state basketball tournament — is the greatest underdog story ever told in Indiana.
Even though little Hickory High was an unlikely champion, it wasn’t completely improbable. After all, sweet-shooting Jimmy Chitwood was the equivalent of a 5-star talent. He just happened to grow up on a nearby farm. Not even the mighty South Bend Central could answer him.
The current Indiana Hoosiers football team — the one that’s 10-0 and ranked fifth in the nation heading into Saturday’s mega-unseen matchup at No. 2 Ohio State — doesn’t have anyone as heralded as Chitwood.
IU is a team full of coaches and players that almost no major program wanted; a group that, rather than accept being passed over by big-school recruiters, worked and worked and worked to prove them wrong — and then generated limited interest in possible transfers as recently as last year.
One person really believed in them, 63-year-old Curt Cignetti, himself an ignored asset. Cignetti spent 27 years as an assistant before ever landing a Division II head coaching job. He won and won — “Google me” — but he didn’t reach the Power 4 until this year when IU tapped him.
Together, the underrated coach and his underrated players romped through the Big Ten, albeit at Indiana, whose 712 losses are the most in FBS football history. They came mostly from the Sun Belt and Mid-American Conference to form a low-expectation group (picked 17th in the 18-team Big Ten) with chips on their shoulders and intent on their game.
Given the chance, they would prove everyone wrong. Ten matches, mission accomplished.
Hollywood endings are hard to come by in real life – so who knows what will happen in Columbus, let alone beyond. The Buckeyes are almost two touchdown favorites for a reason.
The fact that IU is even here heading into a massive late November, top five Big Ten title game and College Football Playoff stakes is a testament to all that is great about sports.
Recruiting rankings and preseason perception don’t move the scoreboard. Struggle and work and self-determination can still win.
Army is America’s team — literally — as the 9-0 Cadets head into a similar matchup against Notre Dame on Saturday.
Indiana is something else.
America itself, or at least the promise of what America is meant to be.
And yet…
“It takes a different coaching mentality because you don’t build a team, you pretty much buy a team,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the university’s former longtime head coach, told AL.com on Monday. “And that was kind of banned when I was training, but now it’s legal.
“Look at Indiana,” Tuberville continued. “They went out and bought them a football team and saw where they were.
Tuberville criticized the state of college football with its transfer portal, which allows for player movement and agreements about their name, image and likeness, which he believes must be punished if violated. He wants to pass laws to solve it.
How the Hoosiers wandered here is both eloquent and absurd. In what is undoubtedly another first for the program, a Washington politician vows to act on concerns about how Indiana football got so good.
There’s a lot to soak in Tuberville, but bringing up his hypocrisy as a job-jumping coach or noting that every NIL contract could already contain clauses if they were broken misses the bigger issue.
Someone with Tuberville’s power doesn’t see Indiana’s winning games as a dreamed-up big-time Disney movie in the making, but rather as a dire problem in need of immediate federal regulation.
It’s part of how the whole issue of NIL trades and deals has been built so backwards that the Senators, even former coaches who are Senators, don’t see the benefits.
They seem still hung up on longing for the way things used to be, or they amplify current coaches’ complaints about how demanding their million-dollar jobs have become. (It certainly isn’t easy being a head coach these days, but every industry changes and rarely does with college football’s skyrocketing salaries).
Or maybe they haven’t moved on from demonstrably false fear-mongering predictions about how NIL will make “the rich get richer” or, more ridiculously, fans will stop watching.
The fact that Curt Cignetti could bring in a bunch of new players (to replace the boatload that moved out) is not a bad thing for college football. It’s a great thing. Overnight, he built a program that perpetually revolved around old rules that favored established brands with greater recruiting advantages.
IU’s quarterback, top four players, four of the top five receivers, starting tight end and top four players are all transfers. Considering the programs they came from, it’s ridiculous to say the Hoosiers “bought” them – unless it was from the dollar store in Indianapolis? Any major program in the country could have done the same. Or they could have hired Cignetti.
Indiana only.
The beauty of these football Hoosiers is the beauty of “Hoosiers” – it allows the unlikely to dream. In the past, about the only way to get a top-five pick was to be at a school that spent decades, even generations, investing in a program to stockpile elite recruiting classes. Even then, you had to be in a fertile recruiting area.
Tuberville understands that part.
All led by Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and so on. The Indianas of the world were hoping to win six games and advance to the Fosters Farm Bowl. The sport was top notch. Over the last 55 years, Ohio State or Michigan have won at least a share of 42 Big Ten titles.
There was almost nothing anyone could do about it.
Apparently there is now. Amazing.
The new system offers a bright light of possibilities. The reality is that almost no one can become Ohio State or Alabama. Anyone can be Indiana. Or Colorado. Or maybe even Ole Miss.
The battle here is not just the coaches’ desire for control versus the player’s freedom. It’s also about competitive balance and spreading excitement behind a small axis of power. Add to that the 12-team college football playoffs.
The three biggest games this weekend include Army, Indiana, BYU and Arizona State. Neither is a traditional winner.
IU, a team of discount coaches and outcast players, will come into its own against the mighty Buckeyes. The new Hoosiers never stopped believing they were good enough, never stopped working to prove it, and thanks to the rule changes, they have the opportunity to give it their best shot.
Maybe it will fit. Maybe not. But they got there.
It’s a famous story — a story only in sports — that should be held up as an ideal, not for the Senators to squint at and try to “fix.” The organization does not need more protection.
After all, the field at Ohio Stadium is 100 yards long.
They find the exact same measurement in Bloomington.