Paul Finebaum, Josh Pate were so, so wrong about Indiana vs. Alabama

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Indiana football was a touchdown favorite heading into Thursday’s Rose Bowl against Alabama. But listening to ESPN’s college football personalities (except Indiana resident Pat McAfee) in the build-up, you’d likely think it was Alabama who was the No. 1 team in the nation.

Longtime SEC carnival barker Paul Finebaum was adamant the Crimson Tide would win. Didn’t even give it a second thought. Josh Pate was equally confident the Tide would handle the top-ranked Hoosiers with ease.

Yeah, about that…

Indiana humiliated Alabama with a dominating 38-3 win in Pasadena. It was a lot for longtime college football fans to fathom if you only looked at brands rather than 2025 resumes.

Indiana began this season with the most losses in FBS history. Now, the Hoosiers under Curt Cignetti are the favorites to win the program’s first national championship.

Pate took his whiff with some grace, posting: “Never thought I’d live to see the haters be right about me,” attached to a clip of his wrong game prediction on “Bussin’ With The Boys” podcast.

The morning after on ESPN’s “Get Up!”, Pate and Finebaum had to face the music. Pate, again owned up to it, while Finebaum made it more about Alabama’s failings than Indiana’s dominance.

“I hid under this carpet for during the second half,” Pate said. “So I can to speak for myself, yes, I needed to see that because I, like Curt Cigentti said there, I understand why there are skeptics. I hope he means that, it makes me feel better this morning, but I understand why there are skeptics and I think maybe there’s not a skepticism about the quality of team Indiana has. That wasn’t what I was skeptical about. It’s still that we’re going through this book of firsts with them. And so, the next page in that book was now that everyone expects you to win, and now that you have to do all the time off thing, and now you gotta face a team that’s playing for its life and does know how to win and been there before in Alabama, can you do all of that? And then you remind yourself at halftime, ‘Wow, this isn’t close.’ And on the scoreboard it just kept getting further and further and further away…

“The Indiana piece of this, there’s still this newness, there’s still this sense that you put the Jell-O in the fridge five minutes ago and it’s slowly congealing… you’ve got Indiana doing everything that the team over there with the ‘A’ on their helmets would have done a generation ago.”

Indiana radio broadcaster Don Fischer, in his 53rd year at IU, called out Finebaum following Kaelon Black’s 25-yard rushing score in the fourth quarter to give IU a 31-3 lead. “What are you thinking now, Paul Finebaum?”

More: Alabama didn’t lose Rose Bowl. Indiana won it — in dominant fashion

Cignetti coached with Nick Saban at Alabama and IU’s dominance Thursday reminded Finebaum of those Saban teams he covered for so many years.

“If you just walked in from lunch yesterday and watched, you would have thought the team beating down Alabama was Alabama under Nick Saban,” Finebaum said “I realize the uniform was similar, but they played just like a Nick Saban team. They beat you to death and made you give up, and that’s what happened. And that’s why everybody in Alabama is beside themselves because their team looked soft, their coach looked soft and their program looked soft. And that is unprecedented territory for Alabama. Yeah, there have been bad losses in recent history. Nick Saban lost by 28 once in a national championship game with Tua Tagliaovola… but ultimately he also had a number of championships in his back pocket. Kalen DeBoer doesn’t have anything in his back pocket right now except goodwill from the Alabama fan base, and I thought that would change 10 days ago when we were in Norman, but it has not. It has actually gotten worse.”

Up next for Indiana is a trip to the Peach Bowl to face an Oregon team the Hoosiers beat 30-20 in October in Eugene.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paul Finebaum, Josh Pate were so wrong about Indiana vs Alabama

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