I think the Indiana football season is the best best story and arguably best football team I have seen in college. They go from unranked to 16-0. They beat 6 top 10 teams and ended the season beating the #1 team, then the #9 team, #5 team and #10 team…they beat those 4 teams by an average of 20 points.
Such an amazing season. It would have been incredibly disappointing to lose after the season thy had. I really believed that it would be a dogfight and it was. Just. Wow.
Disappointing ending to the game though, the last quarter had been nail biting for both sides. WR didn't even seem to consider that ball coming his direction.
They were ranked ~20 to start the season (preseason rankings have always sucked, btw), finished ranked ~10 at the end of last season (then they lost their QB and signed some rando guy from Cal named Mendoza)
I have known you are a Purdue guy for years. It says a ton for you to be pulling for IU for obvious reasons. A lot of people didn’t feel that way but many more Purdue fans than Notre Dame fans were rooting for IU. It’s much appreciated and I have a ton of respect for Purdue; truly a great university.
I hear you! The UT/USC game was that one for me (as far as college sports goes). Never will forget watching it live, and I've rewatched it several many times over the years since. It'll never get old.
Give it 5 years and we'll have a 256 team playoff and you can go 13-0 in the regular season and 8-0 in the playoffs and get to 21-0. The season will go from July to February.
Old news, but I want to post it again. Total number of 4-star and 5-star players on each roster (based on IU's CFP journey), Alabama: ~67 Oregon: 55 Miami: 45 IU: 8 (none were 5-star)
"Production over potential." This is a great example of post-portal team building. The ROI on investing in these 4* and 5* players is diminishing more and more each year.
I'll be curious how this plays out over the next few years. Cignetti has been an amazing coach long before the transfer portal and it might just be unique to IU for now. The other teams that made the playoffs and did well in them are still loaded with these 4 and 5 star players. But to your point, I'd be curious what % of those 4 and 5 stars were transfers as opposed to recruits that were developed at those schools.
Agreed. I think it will be hard to replicate what IU/Cignetti did but I read an interesting quote that the worst thing you can have on your roster right now are highly paid 4*-5* underclassman that aren't playing or still needing development. UT will be an interesting case next season. 26 outgoing transfers, majority of them being high 4* and 5* players, being replaced by a lot of 3* HS recruits that produced last season. On it's face, Sark seems to be going to the IU route while still going big game hunting at certain positions.
IU only had eight 4-stars, zero 5-stars and not only won, they dominated and ran the table to 16-0. I expect UT and other programs stacked with "blue chip" players to become smarter at targeting lower ranked players in the portal.
