Last year at this time we were counting the days to Ohio State's home opener with Notre Dame.
This year the Buckeyes don't face the Fighting Irish until they visit South Bend on season's fourth Saturday. So maybe you’re counting down the days, but offseason hype for that meeting is not really a thing this time.
Ohio State will be right back in Indiana three weeks later when it visits - eek! - West Lafayette, breaking in Purdue's new head coach Ryan Walters. If everything goes well, the Buckeyes will conclude their schedule with a December visit to Indianapolis.
That would make four Indiana trips in one season. Ohio State only plays in Ohio six times this fall.
It all starts with the season opener in Bloomington against the Hoosiers, which despite being the first game on the schedule is overshadowed by OSU’s three other Indiana trips - with the fourth one, as we’ve painfully discovered recently, not guaranteed.
What’s also not guaranteed is any B1G road win. At first blush it might appear IU could be loaded for a big season - the Hoosiers were decent as recently as 2020 and in 2023 they are the only B1G program that didn't have a single player taken in last weekend's NFL Draft. So…everyone’s back?
Well, not everyone. In addition to the players who matriculated out of eligibility, IU saw 21 guys enter the transfer portal including Dasan McCullough, the Hoosiers’ highest-rated recruit ever.
Trevell Mullen (IU’s seventh highest-rated recruit ever) just entered the portal a couple of weeks ago. His big brother Tiawan just went undrafted after starting his career as a Freshman All-America at IU and then earning 1st team AA honors as a sophomore. His production and development tailed off after that, but the Chargers are still giving him a tryout.
Sampson James (IU’s third highest-rated recruit ever) transferred to Purdue in 2021 but he’s back in the portal now. Maybe he’ll return to Bloomington? Getting those historic recruits to stick around has proven to be challenging, and that bump from 2020 now seems squandered.
Either way, Indiana will be taking another shot at its first East Division title this season as well as its first conference title in 56 years. No one seriously believes the Hoosiers will threaten the former because Indiana hasn’t been a consistently serious football program for decades.
It’s still treading above the depths from the Cam Cameron era (he had 25 unused scholarships his final season! That’s like self-imposing major NCAA sanctions!) and in better condition than it was under Bill Lynch, but it’s not trending favorably either.
There is no B1G football program with less juice right now than the one in Bloomington.
And that trend begins with talent. Linebacker Cam Jones may have been among the 60 best players who did not hear their names called over the weekend. He's one of seven Hoosiers who signed free agent contracts after the draft concluded, and one of three departed players with a realistic shot of making a scout team or possibly even a 53-man roster.
That grades IU’s best departing player as 9th round talent in a draft that only goes to seven. The NFL franchise in Indianapolis did draft the late Bill Mallory's grandson, so the weekend wasn’t void of IU flavoring. Will Mallory played college ball at Miami, and not the Miami where grandpa coached prior to Bloomington. That’s about as IU as it got.
But next man up, as they say in sports. The current B1G football recruiting rankings for 2024 have no impact on the upcoming IU-OSU game, but they are an ominous sign of that trend in Bloomington. Until last weekend, the Hoosiers' class was not ranked, because you cannot rank what doesn't yet exist. IU was the only B1G program without a verbal commitment.
They've picked up their first two commitments over the past few days, though - a tight end from Michigan with no other B1G scholarship offers and an offensive lineman from South Dakota with no other FBS offers. Optimistically, they’re both late bloomers heading into their final high school seasons.
So IU's class is now rankable and ranked last, matching the 2023 finish. Optimistically, it will round into form.
In the meantime, the Hoosiers have been swapping out players in the transfer portal in exchange for similar talent to what just left campus. Their 2022 class, arguably the best in program history, represents the bump coming out of its magical albeit abbreviated 2020 campaign. Except the two headliners from that class did not stick around.
And the talent gap shows up on the field: IU is 2-16 in conference play since fans returned to stadiums in 2021. The Hoosiers are not winning games or developing players, which - when you recruit like Indiana does - development is not optional.
Lathan Ransom poses following a pass breakup during Ohio State’s 56-14 win over Indiana in 2022.
There is no B1G football program with less juice right now than the one in Bloomington, and it starts with the man in charge. Last November while Kamryn Babb was making everyone cry, IU's greatest living football coach was on the home side of the Horseshoe coaching tight ends.
Tom Allen inherited Kevin Wilson’s rebuild after 2016, and for a few seasons the Hoosiers looked the part of a mediocre program aggressively threatening their historical ceiling. The current build is now entirely of Allen’s own construction, right down to the Director of Football Operations he hired out of the K-12 ranks in Tennessee.
Mike Doig and Allen coached at the same high school decades ago. He hired his buddy with no collegiate experience into a new pay grade. Optimistically, Doig is another late bloomer. Allen has a habit of hiring his friends, which - you really should not do that.
The Hoosiers’ aggressive downslide from their brief flirtation with consistent bowl eligibility coincides with people in Indiana just asking questions, like how much would it cost to part ways with Allen this year. The answer is an awful lot of money.
This means after what will optimistically be a five-win season without a bowl game - and if you’re into wagering, the under feels much safer - IU will have to decide if Allen should join former basketball coach Archie Miller on its payroll for terminated employees earning millions of dollars annually to stay away of their old offices. It’s good work if you can get it.
The trends are not in the Hoosiers’ favor. If this all feels like punching down, it’s worth disclosing to unfamiliar readers that the alumni associations for both Indiana and Ohio State can claim me, and IU football has made it very easy for a kid from Columbus to be an IU grad and not feel any emotional conflicts during the fall. Part of me has always hated that.
And part of me wishes we were counting down the days to Ohio State’s opener for reasons beyond the return of the college football season. Which, if IU feels like flirting with the idea of being serious about football, should be Allen’s final one in Bloomington.
