preseason coaches poll<\/a>, led by quarterback Avery Johnson. Iowa State has done a ton of image rehab in this century as well, and oddsmakers have Matt Campbell\u2019s Cyclones (tied for No. 21 in the coaches poll) with an over\/under of 7.5 wins this season, preparing to take on the Wildcats in an enormous Week 0 opener in Dublin, Ireland.<\/p>\nKansas remains a basketball school with a mostly bleak history, but coach Lance Leipold almost had the \u201cIndiana of 2023\u201d before we knew about the Indiana of 2024, with a Jayhawks team that finished 9-4. This season, he has Jalon Daniels back for a sixth season at quarterback \u2014 he will end up with starts in all six seasons \u2014 and an over\/under of 7.5 wins. Preseason expectations are too high for Kansas to qualify.<\/p>\n
Once we clear the history bar, we need to confine this to teams with an over\/under of 5.5 victories or lower. That\u2019s where Indiana\u2019s expectations were set a year ago, and that gives us a final four. Except I\u2019m bouncing Vanderbilt too.<\/p>\n
Yes, a Vanderbilt football team is too highly regarded to qualify as a potential Earth-shaking darling of the sport in 2025. The Commodores already achieved that status in 2024, going 7-6 with a win over Alabama that arguably provided a larger one-day dose of shock and awe than Indiana accumulated over four months of football.<\/p>\n
Las Vegas has Vanderbilt at a 5.5 on the over\/under, but that\u2019s actually a fair amount of respect given the schedule. A trip to Virginia Tech is tough, especially considering the revenge factor, and the SEC slate is as follows: at South Carolina, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee; home vs. LSU, Missouri, Auburn and Kentucky. It\u2019s hard to imagine this schedule being vastly easier in real life than it appears on paper and giving Clark Lea\u2019s Commodores a chance to pull an Indiana.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/USATSI_24593598-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Demond Claiborne rushed for 1,049 yards in 2024. (Neville E. Guard \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s hard to name 10 college football players who have achieved more celebrity to this point than Vanderbilt super senior quarterback Diego Pavia. Try it real fast.<\/p>\n
So that leaves three \u2014 Rutgers (5.5 over\/under), Wake Forest (4.5) and Northwestern (3.5). Rutgers has more than earned its spot among the dregs of the sport since participating in the first intercollegiate football game in 1869. Greg Schiano is just 26-34 in his second stint at the school. But he did just follow up a 7-6 season with a 7-6 season. Also, a schedule that includes Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon and Illinois would appear prohibitive.<\/p>\n
Make it a party of two? Northwestern, returning David Braun as head coach after a 4-8 second season and featuring SMU transfer Preston Stone at quarterback, has it a bit easier with no Buckeyes on the schedule. But Big Ten title contenders Penn State and Oregon are on the schedule, plus Michigan (at Wrigley Field) and trips to Nebraska, USC and Illinois.<\/p>\n
Wake Forest is the one. Wake checks the most 2024 Indiana boxes. A first-year coach in Jake Dickert. A transfer quarterback (Robby Ashford, formerly of South Carolina, Auburn and Oregon, is battling Charlotte transfer Deshawn Purdie, who originally committed to Florida out of the transfer portal). A giant class of transfers (35, compared with 31 for Indiana last year). And a schedule that actually might help.<\/p>\n
The nonleague slate is Indiana-level soft, Clemson, Miami and Louisville don\u2019t appear, and SMU, Georgia Tech and North Carolina come to Winston-Salem. I\u2019ve got the Demon Deacons surprising at 6-6, which is about what I expected of Indiana entering last season. So, reserve one of those dozen Playoff spots for them.<\/p>\n
That is, if there isn\u2019t too much backlash from the discourse around Indiana of 2024 to prevent an Indiana of 2025 or any other year. SEC coaches are doing their part. So is Cignetti, strangely enough. Along with joining the other Stepford \u2014 er, Big Ten \u2014 coaches in supporting commissioner Tony Petitti\u2019s absurd plan for Playoff expansion<\/a>, he\u2019s needlessly dropping Virginia from his own schedule and taking shots at the SEC as cover.<\/p>\nAll of it could work against Indiana in future selection committee considerations. It could work against any team that ends up with a gaudy record on the back of an iffy schedule. And it was already going to be unlikely to find another Indiana of 2024.<\/p>\n
But at least it\u2019s possible. Back in the four-team days, 2024 Indiana gets a nicer bowl game than usual. Thank you, 12-team Playoff. You are the 2024 Indiana of Playoff formats: better than expected, legitimately good, unfairly disrespected and destined to be a historical footnote.<\/p>\n
(Top photo of Curt Cignetti: Trevor Ruszkowski \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Start with historical futility when searching for \u201cthe Indiana of 2025,\u201d because that\u2019s what separates a garden variety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[331,7,4725,4720,4719,4722,49,48,8243,4726,7205,3201],"class_list":{"0":"post-266383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-indiana-hoosiers","11":"tag-iowa-state-cyclones","12":"tag-kansas-jayhawks","13":"tag-kansas-state-wildcats","14":"tag-ncaa","15":"tag-ncaa-football","16":"tag-northwestern-wildcats","17":"tag-rutgers-scarlet-knights","18":"tag-vanderbilt-commodores","19":"tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114981946391036856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}