Before we can attempt to predict the ‘next Indiana,’ to make the College Football Playoff, we must be willing to consider the absurd.
Schedule video for the 2025 Illinois Fighting Illini football team
Here is who Illinois will play in the 2025 college football season, from its opener vs. Western Illinois to the season finale with Northwestern.
Before we can attempt to predict the next Indiana, we must first appreciate the absurdity, the utter improbability, of the 2024 Hoosiers making the College Football Playoff.
Indiana won three games the previous season and lost to some of the Big Ten’s worst teams. The Hoosiers, who were in their first year with coach Curt Cignetti, had only achieved nine victories twice in its history. Never before had they won 10. Oddsmakers set their over/under at 5½ victories, and the media picked them to finish 17th in the 18-team Big Ten.
The Indianapolis Star took “a pretty big leap” while predicting an 8-4 regular season for the Hoosiers. Another Big Ten newspaper of record, the Omaha World-Herald, surmised a “bowl bid is not out of the question,” while projecting 6-6.
Indiana’s accommodating schedule aided its thrill ride, but even knowing that schedule, who foresaw the Hoosiers smashing Nebraska, handling a Michigan team that later beat Alabama, and securing playoff viability at 11-1?
So, when trying to pinpoint the next Indiana, it becomes an injustice to the 2024 Hoosiers to include any preseason Top 25 team.
How to find next Indiana for College Football Playoff
Illinois attracts comparisons to the 2024 Hoosiers, as basketball-leaning Big Ten schools without a history of football greatness. But, Illinois returns most of its starters from a 10-win team. Expectations are too great and too reasonable to earmark the Illini as the next Indiana.
Like Illinois, Texas Tech could pursue…
Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2025/07/22/college-football-playoff-predictions-big-ten-indiana/85310563007/
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Publish date : 2025-07-22 09:59:00
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