It is not even Columbus Day and Indiana University’s football team is bowl-eligible. The leaves are still on the trees and IU is bowl-eligible.
After pulling away from Northwestern, 41-24, Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Michigan, the Hoosiers are 6-0, one of only a few teams in college football that can say so. The win lifted IU from 23rd to 18th in the national Associated Press poll.
And even if there are way too many bowls and half the country will ultimately be bowl-eligible, it says something about the resurgence of Indiana football that the team knows it can play in the post-season by early October.
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After all, how many times in recent years has the season gone by without the squad ever becoming bowl-eligible? Most of them, actually.
The Hoosier fans are hardly spoiled, so it means something to the rooters, although to coach Curt Cignetti it was just a step along the way in a long season when success will be measured more specifically by greater accomplishments.
“All right, nice win,” Cignetti said. “It’s great to be 6-0. I’m not going to say we needed a game like that, but we were certainly tested back and forth like we had not been tested this season. Most of our wins have been pretty decisive.”
For sure. Indiana has lifted eyebrows across the country with those decisive wins. The Hoosiers are 6-0, but are also 3-0 in the Big Ten Conference standings, the only one of the 18 teams in the expanded league that can make the claim entering a bye week.
It is no doubt true that few IU football fans had heard of Cignetti before his arrival in Bloomington after the exile of previous coach Tom Allen. So, as far as first impressions go, he has been graded an A-plus.
This journey to Evanston, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago, challenged the Hoosiers more than most of its preceding games. IU’s potent offense would punch and Northwestern (2-3), behind young quarterback Jack Lausch (243 yards, two TD passes) would counter-punch, giving Indiana’s stout defense a variety of issues to worry about until very late in the game.
“Probably wasn’t our best game defensively, not probably, it wasn’t.” Cignetti said. “It started with us letting the quarterback out of the pocket on third down early in the game, but I really like the way we finished defensively on the last two (Wildcats’) drives. I really liked that a lot.”
IU entered the game averaging 48 points and nearly matched that season-long performance. Quarterback Kurtis Rourke has established himself as a go-to leader and has stretches where he guides the Hoosiers down the field seemingly effortlessly over and over again. Saturday, Rourke accumulated 380 yards through the air and tossed three touchdown passes. IU gained 529 yards.
Each time the Wildcats threatened to take the lead, Rourke had an answer.
“Just respond, do what we do,” said Rourke, who played most of his career at Ohio University, but in this era of rent-a-player in college football, is excelling for IU. “That’s kind of something we pride ourselves in is playing team football.”
As he has all season, Rourke was an equal-opportunity thrower, hitting eight different receivers with his 25 completions. No one was flashier than Elijah Sarratt, one of the players who transferred from James Madison along with Cignetti. Sarratt caught seven balls for 135 yards. He said he deserves the nickname “Waffle House,” because he is always open. Northwestern would agree.
The last time Indiana began a season 6-0 was 1967 on its way to an 8-0 start. That is an eternity ago in sports, especially for a program that hasn’t had much success since reaching the Rose Bowl at the end of that season.
Television commentators noted that Cignetti, who is 63, was in first grade at the time of that accomplishment and they dug up a class photo of him from elementary school.
Cignetti understands where long-time Indiana fans are coming from, but he is not looking back, but only to the future. The way he sees things during his initial season at IU is things are just getting started on his watch.
“Look guys,” Cignetti said during his post-game press conference, “this is culture and mindset. These are guys who came from championship programs that have now won 20 of their last 21 games. A lot of other transfers that come from other good programs and guys who stayed that had a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. When you take over a program the number one thing you have to do is to change the way people think.”
Under Cignetti, Indiana fans now think the Hoosiers can win every week.