THE SITUATIONAL: Breaking Away

The General has been expatriated nearly as long as he served as Bloomington's unofficial emperor. But campus legends never enter or leave the city limits; they simply take up omnipotence and reign for eternity over future generations cursed with having been born too late.

In more familiar terms: Woody Hayes hasn't coached Ohio State football for the past 45 seasons. He died in 1987. That hasn't stopped him from missing a single game since 1951 when Miami stopped paying his salary. Woody never left because legends don't leave.

IU's revenue sports have been dismal this century, which inconveniently began with Knight's termination - and if you believe in curses, that one lines up suspiciously well. Above all esteemed athletic accomplishments in Indiana history (a bunch of soccer natties, every swimming title possible while Mark Spitz had an active IU ID) the Hoosiers take great pride in their basketball banners, three of which were delivered during Knight's tenure.

If you're into bizarre trivia, only one IU men's basketball team has ever survived a Sweet Sixteen game without having at least one Knight player on it. That happened in 1953 under Branch McCracken, the year before Knight began playing organized basketball at Orrville High School.

That exception is memorialized with a big red banner - the second one from the left in Assembly Hall. A basketball school in a basketball state. Remove one Ohioan and IU is a soccer school.

Indiana hasn't maintained the credentials Knight gave it since the program ran out of his players. Even his alma mater - unambiguously a football school - has been to three Elite Eights during IU's dry spell. Five coaches have tried to replace him since his termination, but ghost emperors are irreplaceable. They don't leave.

The Hoosiers still have not found a Jim Tressel-type exorcist who can thrive and coexist with an imposing red-sweatered ghost, and those coaches are rare. The current guy, who ironically goes by Woody, is not the guy. If you think Ohio State is a graveyard for football coaches, check out IU basketball. Equally haunted.

Indiana is both prideful of and starved for championship banners. Saturday's game in Columbus is the biggest in program history.

Knight passed away last November. That same month, his former employer hired Curt Cignetti - a ruthlessly efficient autocrat and program strategist who led Division II and FCS programs before reaching the FBS only when James Madison made the jump in 2022 while he was its head coach.

He turned 60 without having led a major program. Just like Woody (not the Ohio State one).

IU hasn't had a coach with Cignetti's gravitas or efficacy since The General was actively terrorizing the Big Ten. Going 10-0 with moribund program like Indiana's is so hard to do that 9-0 had never happened until this month. His predecessor Tom Allen, a loser's loser emblematic of the university's non-commitment to football didn't win ten total games in his final three seasons combined.

Saturday is objectively the biggest football game in Indiana football history, which is admittedly a narrow competition. Our candidates include IU playing Purdue in a WWII-constrained season dominated by military academies before the Big Ten existed. Sure, big game.

Then there's the COVID-constrained season dominated by contact tracing where the Hoosiers trailed the Buckeyes 35-7 before the "home" team packed it in - recency bias, but that season still doesn't feel real, and you're reading a site that covers one of the two programs that played in the 2020 national title game. Just playing was the big moment that season.

There's an Old Oaken Bucket meeting in 1967 which had Rose Bowl implications but came off IU getting drubbed 33-7 by Minnesota which knocked them out of the AP Poll. And finally, a postseason-eligibility win against Purdue in 2007 which sent the Hoosiers to the Insight Bowl while extending Bill Lynch's tenure, cementing IU as the conference's least serious football program. That team lost five of its last seven.

The runner-up to this Saturday is the Rose Bowl play-in game against Michigan State from 1987, which IU lost but Hayes acolyte Bill Mallory ended up winning in the Spartans' locker room. Indiana is both prideful of and starved for championship banners. The emperor they terminated may have returned in reanimated flesh, but he's working across the parking lot from Assembly Hall.

Saturday's meeting in Columbus holds the highest stakes in program history, and it's not all that close. Even without conference title implications, the Hoosiers have never before participated in a top-five game in 126 years of playing organized football.

As for the Buckeyes, it's their third one in six weeks. The usual, baby! Let's get Situational.

OPENER | MURDER ALGORITHM

C.J. Hicks sacks Northwestern quarterback Jack Lausch during the 2nd half of the game at Wrigley on Saturday, ©Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The quality of Indiana's schedule has created a lot of noise which would be worth listening to if the Hoosiers weren't carpet-bombing their opponents for four quarters. There's a word for a football team which wins emphatically every weekend - it's juggernaut.

You're fluent in this noise because it's a little too familiar. When IU isn't having a season unlike any other, it's usually Ohio State's schedule being scrutinized mostly by twangy accents with playoff seedings at stake. There are two Americas everywhere you look. A large, humid portion of our country values good losses over bad wins.

Hey, the Hoosiers have neither. The Buckeyes have one of each (Oregon, Nebraska).

Michigan has four 1st round draft picks on its roster and still lost to Indiana. The Wolverines (probably) don't have decoded play-calling signal packages for their opponents prior to kickoff this season, which hasn't helped diffuse the flimsy argument that their cheating was immaterial to success. This paragraph has nothing to do with this section; I just felt like typing it.

Indiana's offense has scored more 4th quarter points through 10 games than the Ohio State defense has allowed all season.

Both IU and OSU have played ten games, which gives us a nice sample size along with easy decimal math to tell stories about how the Hoosiers and Buckeyes have performed this season. Ryan Day's offense in the waning moments of 4th quarters in big games is a well-traveled discussion, so we'll skip it.

Instead let's start with Jim Knowles' unit, by half - with a special callout to Winning Time, aka the 4th quarter. Even while cycling through roster depth at an unprecedented rate compared to the rest of Day's Columbus tenure, there's very little garbage to pick out:

The only piece of refuse through ten games was the Hawkeyes' shutout-spoiling garbage time touchdown while backups' backups were on the field. That leaves just 18 total 4th quarter points allowed by the Silver Bullets through 10 games. They aren't even allowing a field goal in Winning Time.

Across from Knowles' unit on Saturday will be the first offense since the one it saw in Eugene that probably won't be intent on shortening the game because it prefers to show off its prodigious offense. Cig isn't the Tresselball type, nor is going to shy from the moment.

Until the 2nd half of their most recent game, his offense produced double-digits halves exclusively:

It's easy to Rick Dalton the Michigan game as proof the Hoosiers aren't quite as magical when their very good, experience-laden, well-coached team has to deal with more than a handful of NFL guys. Cig followed the 2023 Michigan model for assistants and roster construction. The stuff that doesn't get investigated works, too.

Cignetti's staff has also had a couple of weeks to diagnose why Michigan was such a pain in the ass, download that lesson and convert it into a game plan for the toughest opponent on the schedule. Indiana's offense has scored more 4th quarter points through 10 games than the Ohio State defense has allowed all season.

Ohio State's offense vs. Indiana's defense will obviously be interesting too, especially with the Buckeyes' offensive line now pared down to the marrow with injuries. But whichever unit produces its version of The Usual during Winning Time on Saturday should end up being the team celebrating that night.

Michigan lost in Bloomington because of its high school offense. Ohio State won't be as flawed.

INTERMISSION

The Solo

The last time we had to tolerate the unforgivable phrase Defending National Champion Michigan Wolverines it was following the 1997 season. This year, intermissions will pay homage to that cursed year's Billboard Hot 100.

It took less than an hour to record what reputable song critics have called the catchiest pop song of all time. The Spice Girls' debut is so catchy, the estimated number of clicks its video above will get is close to zero. That's because you saw it, groaned and already have it in your head without pressing play. Blame Michigan, not me.

Wannabe contains a mid-song rap interlude. Let's answer our two questions.

are the musicians in this video actually rapping?

All five Spice Girls (Bashful, Sneezy, Happy, Sleepy and Doc) can be seen and heard rapping in this video. Less than a year after it was recorded, legendary hip-hop poet laureates Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were both dead. You don't need any other details. VERDICT: Tragically, yes.

does this mid-song rap interlude slap?

As a son of Upper Arlington I frequently lunched at a restaurant former resident Dave Thomas named for his daughter, Wendy, in the location walkable from the high school. It was during that era I learned her name didn't exist prior to its inclusion in J.M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan.

Can't remember a single science class, but the Wendy thing I'll carry with me well into my dementia years. There's another word which a single piece of art created; this one didn't exist until Wannabe post-production. Producers loved the recording but felt it was missing something. They wanted something to beef up the end of the hook.

So they invented a new word, dubbed it in and began printing multi-platinum records:

zigazig-ahhh

They invented that! You didn't press play and now the song is even louder. Owned. VERDICT: Slaps.

The Bourbon

There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.

Birthright. New, came out of nowhere & it's good?

James Madison University is tucked inside the state of Virginia, a commonwealth famous for its accommodation of lovers. Indiana plucked its head coach out of JMU after begrudgingly accepting that being terrible at football in a conference with infinite wealth was a choice, not a destiny.

Birthright is distilled 100 miles from Bridgeforth Stadium in Harrisonburg, whose sidelines Cignetti was patrolling last November. Its papers are interesting enough - we're looking at a 70/20/10 corn/rye/malted barley mash with the last component receiving a light cherry and applewood smoke.

Batch No.1, which is what I got my hands on is a blend of five barrels aged between six months (!) and two-and-a-half years, all using the alligator char made famous by Wild Turkey. This overcorrects for the young mash by forcing quite a bit of spice and color into the into what comes out of the bottle.

The result is a total lack of subtlety. That smoke from the cherry/applewood malted barley comes out hot on the nose, followed by a youthful, sweet-creamy vanilla on the palate - this is where all that corn shows up. The finish is ginger and clove, the kind of spice you'd expect from five barrels treated with no.4 char.

Available in stores and online, retailing at $69.99. IU would hire it, because it wins. Google it.

CLOSER | BREAKING AWAY

IU Quarterback Kurtis Rourke throws a pass against Michigan at Memorial Stadium on Friday, Nov. 9, 2024. © Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

I was in an oxycodone acetaminophen-fueled haze following knee surgery on Friday with the TV on when some analyst quipped that she really needed to see Ohio State produce a 100-yard rusher against Northwestern. Didn't catch her name. With respect, ma'am - no you don't.

Quinshon Judkins went over 100 against Western Michigan and Marshall only because he was getting north of 12 yards per carry. TreVeyon Henderson's last 100-yard game came against Minnesota last year. He's averaging 7.4 per carry while Judkins is getting six. The reward for a 100-yard rusher is there is no reward.

It's a cheap plaque from a bygone era. A 100-yard game is a buggy whip in a world flush with automobiles. Ohio State's opponents are getting the fresh and cresting doses of QuinVeyon Henderkins in 2nd halves at the expense of a statistic which has no utility in a 12-team playoff postseason.

Durability is the priority in this new world, because you never know when an ACL is going to snap or an Achilles will go full-metaphor. The best way to guard against injuries is through committed sustainability programs, because those give the freaky shit fewer shots at wrecking the players you cannot afford to lose.

Northwestern completed the sustainability chunk of Ohio State's schedule, which now shifts to bangers-only starting Saturday. In Chicago, Will Howard got 55 snaps, Caleb Downs got 50 and no one else flirted with our unscientifically-derived activity cap.

Credit the Buckeyes' opponents, which have made game-shortening a strategy to give Ohio State's offense fewer snaps. Shorter games may be cosmetically useful for them on Saturdays, but they actually aid and abet in OSU surviving what could be a 17-game season.

If the Buckeyes are able to finish on the favorable side of their Natty or Bust equation, perhaps they should send replica rings to opponents like Northwestern, who snapped the ball with one second on the play clock starting with its first possession. Michigan will follow that strategy after Thanksgiving, which we'll talk about next week.

SITUATIONAL ARCHIVE The Situational Whiskey Cellar

As for this weekend's visitors, they will stay the aggressor they've been all season. IU will not try and shorten a game when it has the best back-shoulder throwing program in the country and is facing two defensive backs who have given opponents too many reasons to pick on them.

The Hoosiers' A-game is enough to pull off an upset as long as the Buckeyes don't bring their own version of that performance. In that case, this shouldn't be close. But Ohio State hasn't played an A-game all season. Perhaps it's been waiting for the right time.

Thanks for getting Situational today. Go Bucks. Beat Indiana.