Jack’s Take: Indiana Deserved College Football Playoff Bid Despite Loss At Notre Dame

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – When a team suffers a bad loss in the College Football Playoff, the discussion becomes whether they really deserved the chance to compete for a national championship. 

This year, that target is Indiana. It didn’t help that the Hoosiers played in the standalone game Friday night on national television with millions watching. Everyone’s attention was on them, and it was the only game to discuss. 

Indiana certainly didn’t help its case, either. The Hoosiers committed an early turnover, gave up a 98-yard touchdown run, were dominated at the line of scrimmage all night and had an uncharacteristically poor tackling game. They trailed 27-3 with less than five minutes to play, only to score two garbage-time touchdowns to make the final score look more respectable. 

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti fueled the critics with pregame comments on ESPN’s College GameDay by declaring, “We don’t just beat top-25 teams. We beat the s— out of them.” He and the Hoosiers didn’t back that up, and it’s fair for people to clap back.

Make no mistake, Indiana got beat badly Friday night in South Bend. It didn’t look competitive live, and it felt like the Hoosiers played even worse after watching the game a second time. So of course, the loudest television and internet voices began arguing the committee made an egregious mistake by letting Indiana in the playoff. 

“The atmosphere was historic; the game was not,” Kirk Herbstreit said Saturday morning on ESPN’s College GameDay. “I’m not gonna sit here and say, ‘Why was Indiana in?’”

Yes, you are.

“But Indiana, with what you guys like to talk about, they have 11 wins. They gotta be one of the best teams,” Herbstreit said sarcastically. “Indiana was outclassed in that game. They should not physically – it was not a team that should have been on that field when you consider other teams that could have been there. It’s no knock on Indiana.”

Yes, it is.

“They had a great year,” Herbstreit compensated. “But we’ve gotta move forward with the playoff and hope that the committee does a better job of weighing who the best 12 are versus who’s the most deserving, because by golly, they got 11 wins. They didn’t beat anybody, but they got 11 wins. That’s a bunch of BS. We need to find the best teams, and last night it was incredibly evident standing on that field and watching the game and the way it played out.”

There’s a lot to like about the new 12-team playoff. It creates more meaningful regular season games, because more teams have a chance to reach the playoff. On-campus games provide amazing atmospheres, which college football does better than any sport. And it carves a path for programs like Indiana, SMU, Boise State, Arizona State and others to compete on the biggest stage.

That’s what makes some analysts so mad. Whenever a team like little old Indiana – the losingest program in college football history – has a shred of success, they tear it down at the first opportunity and make up reasons why they shouldn’t have been there, because the Hoosiers don’t have the history to earn the benefit of doubt. In a weird way, it’s a sign of respect to the Hoosiers. They’re talked about, because they’re a threat to the old guard.

Indiana is also not the only team to lay an egg in the playoff. Saturday’s first-round games saw SMU lose 38-10 at Penn State; Clemson lose to 38-24 at Texas; and Tennessee lose to 42-17 at Ohio State. Somehow, Indiana ended up with the smallest margin of defeat in the first round.

Blowouts are nothing new, just because it’s a 12-team playoff now. It happened annually in the four-team playoff. Georgia beat TCU 65-7 in the 2023 national championship. The year before, both semifinal games were decided by 21-plus points. Alabama won the 2021 national championship 52-24 over Ohio State, which beat Clemson 49-28 in the first round. Eight more playoff games from 2015-20 were decided by 20 or more points. 

There was a clear gap in talent between Indiana and Notre Dame, and that separation from top-tier teams has existed for years. It’ll continue in the quarterfinals of this year’s playoffs, but it doesn’t mean the team that lost didn’t earn a spot.

Arguing that Indiana didn’t deserve to make it is also a pointless exercise. The committee can only go off games that were played in the regular season. It doesn’t have a time traveling machine to go back and re-seed the playoff after first-round blowouts.

Herbstreit and others are wrong. Despite how badly it played against Notre Dame, Indiana still 100% deserved a spot in the College Football Playoff. Why? Look at the teams that fell short, and consider how you want the field to be seeded.

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has been complaining for weeks that his 9-3 Rebels – 14th in the final CFP rankings – should have made the playoffs. He continued Saturday afternoon by posting on X, “Way to keep us on the edge of our seats Committee …. Riveting.”

If Kiffin wanted to be in the playoffs, his team shouldn’t have lost at home to a 4-8 Kentucky team. Indiana dominated teams of Kentucky’s caliber. Many were also complaining about No. 11 Alabama also being left out. The Tide would make a much more compelling case if they didn’t lose 24-3 to a 6-6 Oklahoma team, or lose 40-35 to 6-6 Vanderbilt. 

What about No. 13 Miami? The ‘Canes would make a good case if they didn’t lose to Georgia Tech and Syracuse, or if they beat a ranked team to make up for it. No. 15 South Carolina? It doesn’t have the bad losses necessarily, but it has three three of them, including Ole Miss and Alabama, whose flaws we addressed.

Indiana’s strength of schedule often gets mentioned in this discussion. The Hoosiers entered the playoff ranked 67th in that category, not too different from SMU (57), Notre Dame (60), Arizona State (62), Boise State (79). Ole Miss, Alabama, Miami and South Carolina were higher than Indiana in strength of schedule, but each ranked behind the Hoosiers in strength of record going into the playoffs, per ESPN. 

Even after a bad showing in the playoffs, I’d still rather see teams have to earn their way in, rather than giving spots to teams based on hypothetical scenarios and who we think would win. The games have to matter. Indiana earned its way in by going 11-1, playing nine Big Ten games and having the nation’s highest average scoring margin. 

Alabama losing to Oklahoma and Ole Miss losing to Kentucky does not equate to earning a spot in the playoffs. If the committee only seeds teams based on who its members think are the best 12, then do the games even matter anymore? In that format, the committee would be rewarding reputation, recruiting rankings and strength of schedule more than it would value winning games.

That’s not to say the current College Football Playoff format is perfect. It’s the first year of the 12-team playoff, and the sample size is small. But if I were to make one change, it would be to eliminate automatic first-round byes for conference champions, but still keep them in the field and seed the playoff based on the committee’s rankings. 

Boise State and Arizona State received first-round byes this year, despite being ranked No. 8 and No. 12, respectively. Give those byes to No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Penn State instead. That would create first-round matchups of Clemson at Notre Dame; Arizona State at Ohio State, SMU at Tennessee and Boise State at Indiana. 

I love the on-campus games and wouldn’t eliminate that, but it’s fair to wonder if that contributes to blowouts more than we originally thought. All four home teams won handily in the first round. But the current seeding format makes that more likely as it creates matchups with a larger disparity in teams’ rankings.

So for Indiana fans, enjoy the 11-2 season – the best in program history – and don’t get discouraged by the outside noise against the Hoosiers. They deserved a spot in the playoffs, and Friday’s loss, although disappointing, does not change that.