Just Secede Already, Indiana

Let’s keep this short: Indiana sucks and I wish we could let them leave the B1G.

They are 1) terrible at football historically, 2) historically whiny and petulant, and 3) make the rest of us dumber.

Terrible at Football

Indiana has made one Rose Bowl appearance.

In 1967 there was a three-way tie for the B1G title among Indiana, Purdue, and Minnesota. If you said to yourself: “Hmm, those three teams? The conference must have sucked that year!” well, you’d be right. As a conference, the B1G finished six games under .500, good for 12th out of 12 conference in terms of winning percentage.

So it’s only fitting Indiana, who was 26th in SRS that year and who had an average scoring margin of +3.4 on the year, would emerge from the shit heap.

Yes, you read that right.

Indiana somehow went 9-2 on the year and outscored opponents by 38 points, TOTAL. Five of their six B1G victories were by one score. Minnesota, who was mauled by Purdue, defeated Indiana 33-7. But Indiana won the Bucket 19-14 to create the three-way tie. I can only assume Mike Phipps and Leroy Keyes missed the team bus that day. Indiana went to the Rose Bowl and probably deserves some credit for only losing 14-3 to USC, who won the national title.

In the 53 years since? 12 bowl appearances (3-9, riding a six bowl losing streak) and three appearances in the final rankings (at 19, 20, and COVID, at that). The closest Indiana has come to returning to the Rose Bowl was 1987. In the penultimate game of the season, Indiana—5-1 in conference play—headed to East Lansing to face Michigan State (5-0-1), with the winner guaranteed sole possession of first place with a game to play.

What sort of heroics were required to deprive Indiana of a second Rose Bowl bid?

Um, give the ball to Lorenzo White 56 times (!!!) and stay out of the way.

Michigan State 27, Indiana 3. Rushing yards: MSU 341, Indiana 33.

And that’s as close as Indiana has been...until last year (kind of...).

Historically whiny and petulant

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Yes, the B1G changed the rules, but...

1. Ohio State was better
2. Ohio State won head-to-head
3. Ohio State could have forfeited a game, hit the minimum, and won the division under the original rule.

Forget (1) and (2) for a second, and focus on (3). Indiana is going to protest their conference affiliation because they think they were deprived of a division title that they wouldn’t have won anyway if Ohio State had just scheduled—and forfeited—a game?

Great fucking hill to die on dipshits:

Now, 8 months later, how’s that looking?

Don’t want to publicly affirm your affiliation in the B1G? Great, have fun in the AAC assholes. We’ll take Kansas, and nobody will notice the difference, at least until March, when there’s a traditional power actually capable of getting past the Sweet 16 representing the B1G, instead of the zombified corpse of Hoosier seasons past, animated only by a need to retroactively supply context to Bob Knight’s failings as a human being.

In some ways, it would be fitting, as Roy Williams’s early 90s KU knocked overrated IU teams out of the tournament twice, basically ending Knight’s time as a leading coach.

Oh, and nice job pairing your anti-B1G protest with shitting the bed against a sub .500 team in the Bowl Game. Yes, your histrionics certainly strike the powers that be as a truly credible threat to the dignity and earning potential of the larger conference structure.

Get a fucking clue.

Make the rest of us dumber

Because you whined and complained about a situation where, again, your argument hinged on a game not being played rather than played and lost, you opened the door to all sorts of whiny Illinois fans crying out for a rule change during the basketball season.

Never mind that THIS TIME the argument was that the rules should be changed to emphasize the value of a head-to-head result. While a plausible argument given our tendency to value head-to-head, it only revealed how fucking hollow Indiana’s original argument truly was.

And when Illinois decided to shit the bed in the postseason, they did so proudly sporting evidence of their B1G affiliation. (Wait...is that better?)

Bottom line. Fuck off Indiana. The patron saint of this site would certainly welcome a state willing to bleed for its membership than a bunch of Copperheads with clearly suspect loyalties.