Indiana is a football school now and Hoosiers should be ranked for first time since 1994

Indiana football often takes a backseat to the Hoosiers basketball program but IU football is legit this year and should be ranked in the AP Top 25.

Beating the Northwestern Wildcats last year mattered, as Pat Fitzgerald‘s team won the Big Ten West for the first time in school history. But that was last year and this year, they are terrible. The latest team to beat the lackluster Wildcats this season is the Indiana Hoosiers. Indiana, a school better known for its basketball program, is playing some great football right now.

Tom Allen’s team improved to 7-2 (4-2) on the year. The Hoosiers achieved bowl eligibility in last week’s narrow victory over the increasingly awful Nebraska Cornhuskers. To make sure we got this right. Indiana achieved bowl eligibility in October. This isn’t completely untrodden territory, but this doesn’t happen in Bloomington very often.

So how untrodden is this territory? Well, the last time the Hoosiers were ranked in the AP Top 25 Poll, Bill Clinton was the President of the United States of America, Major League Baseball had a strike and the New York Rangers just won a Stanley Cup. The last time they were ranked was Sept. 20, 1994. This is an accomplishment 25 years in the making.

While the Hoosiers played great defense on Saturday night, their first Saturday night home game in November in school history, it has been the offense that led Indiana to seven wins already this year. Outside of the lop-sided loss to the Ohio State Buckeyes in September, the Hoosiers have scored at least 31 points in every other contest.

In all seven of their wins, the Hoosiers have managed at least 31 points of offense. They’ve played two quarterbacks this year in Peyton Ramsey and Michael Penix Jr. Both can move around a little bit in the pocket and makes plays with their legs. But their best player has to be running back Stevie Scott III, perhaps the next Tevin Coleman or Jordan Howard in the Hoosiers backfield.

So how good can this Hoosiers team be? Well, we’re looking at probably an 8-4 (5-4) record. They’re not going to beat the Penn State Nittany Lions on the road in Happy Valley in two weeks. With the way the Michigan Wolverines are playing of late, the Hoosiers are probably not beating them in three weeks. They’ll get their eighth win on the road against the Purdue Boilermakers.

So right now, the Hoosiers are very likely the fourth-best team in the Big Ten East behind Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan. Though they lost earlier in the year to the Michigan State Spartans, they’d likely beat them if they were to meet again this season. Indiana is clearly better than two grease fires in the division in the Maryland Terrapins and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

The shame in it all is the Hoosiers play in the tougher of the two Big Ten divisions. If they were to somehow swap with Purdue and be injected into the Big Ten West, are we sure the Hoosiers aren’t undefeated at this point? They’re proving to us know that they can hang with the upper middle of the Big Ten with teams like the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Overall, the Hoosiers stand a great chance at winning nine games this season, if you count their bowl game. With the way that the Big Ten East battle tests its teams, there is great reason to believe that the Hoosiers might actually be better than their record indicates. This is a fun team to watch that no one’s talking about. Well, they should and Indiana should be ranked next week.

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