Why Indiana-Ohio State football game will deliver something we've never seen before

BLOOMINGTON — On the night of Nov. 25, 1967, then-IU President Elvis Stahr joined Dr. Edwin Cady, the university’s faculty athletics representative, at the house of athletic director Bill Orwig.

Hours earlier, Indiana had defeated Purdue 19-14 in what stood then as the most important game in the young history of what was still called (and at least informally would be for several more years) the 17^th Street Stadium.

Victory entered IU into a three-way tie with both Minnesota and the Boilermakers atop the Big Ten standings, and since Purdue could not return to the Rose Bowl by conference rule, having played in it the year before, a vote of league ADs would determine who got to go to Pasadena. Conference commissioner Bill Reed planned to call all parties with the result.

One minute after 9 p.m., Orwig’s telephone rang. Cady answered, spoke briefly with Reed, then hung up and turned to Stahr.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he told his president, “but I have just accepted the Rose Bowl bid on behalf of our university.”

From that moment to this one, Memorial Stadium has stood waiting for another moment of such gravity. When the gaze of college football would fix itself onto the old arena’s limestone façade, and the sport would orbit around it.

That will happen again this weekend, when Ohio State travels west on I-70 for perhaps the most anticipated game in IU history. College football’s two most recent national champions, squaring off in a rematch of what in December became the most-watched conference title game ever.

Saturday represents a once-in-a-generation moment for this program, its fans and its university. Even that Purdue game does not quite measure up.

IU-Ohio State has the capacity to deliver everything we expect, and also nothing we’ve ever seen before. A perfectly antithetical collision of longstanding past, fascinating present and, for both teams, tantalizing future.

IU football takes center stage vs Ohio State

“I’m glad we’re playing at home. We really need our crowd to be loud, and very involved. We’ve got to give them reasons to be. I can’t — It’s just a football game, but I’m glad it’s at home. Two really good teams. Great team we’re playing. Not sure how good we are yet. But our crowds have been awesome. They need to be loud. Real loud.”

That was as far as Curt Cignetti would be drawn this week into discussion of the historical gravity of Saturday’s game. There was no stopping the wider world’s willingness to embrace the hype for him.

Because this almost certainly is the biggest on-campus sporting event — wording the reporter used in the question that prompted that answer from Cignetti — in Indiana University’s long history. Perhaps not the most important, when compared for example to Bill Garrett’s helping to break the color barrier in the Big Ten, but certainly the most prominent.

Rarely has college football made IU football appointment viewing like it will Saturday afternoon, and justifiably so. The calendar has been waiting for this day all year.

Yet it’s in that context that Saturday’s meeting between the Hoosiers and Buckeyes takes its most curious turn. Because while this game contains the potential for all sorts of importance and implication, it is not at all what history tells us it should be.

From 'Dark Day' to college football classic for IU-Ohio State series

When Indiana beat Ohio State in Columbus in 1987 to break a 31-game winless streak in the series, then-Buckeyes coach Earle Bruce afterward described it as “the darkest day in Ohio State football since I have been associated with it.” Bruce, who played at Ohio State before coaching his alma mater, was dismissed near the end of that season.

After the Hoosiers repeated the feat the next year, 41-7 in Bloomington, members of Bill Mallory’s team began referring to that win as “Dark Day II.”

Little else can capture the relationship between Indiana and Ohio State on the football field so well as that kind of hyperbole. The series between the two schools is so historically one-sided, no team has hung more losses on IU than the Buckeyes. When Curt Cignetti took Indiana to its state capital to play Ohio State in last year’s Big Ten championship game, his players saw their opponent as a necessary part of the experience — the Hoosiers needed to beat Ohio State, and feel the validation of beating Ohio State, for that game to mean what it ultimately would.

For generations, any meeting with the Buckeyes has felt for Indiana like an opportunity for validation. Win this game, and prove things will be different now.

Like in 2015, when Kevin Wilson’s 4-0 Hoosiers hosted the No. 1 team in the country, and forced Ohio State to sweat all 60 minutes of a game only decided when IU’s final drive stalled out in view of the end zone, in a 34-27 Buckeyes’ win. Or 2017, when Tom Allen, about to begin his first season as head coach in Bloomington, billed a Thursday night season opener against Ohio State as the most important Week 1 in program history.

A win over Ohio State has been an elusive prize IU teams chased as they toiled, often in vain, to raise their program from its humble past toward a brighter future. That class difference defines the history of this series.

Not on Saturday.

It would take generations for Indiana to match all Ohio State has achieved historically, of course. But here, now, between the sidelines with cameras rolling, the No. 4 Hoosiers (6-0, 3-0) and No. 5 Buckeyes (5-1, 2-1) are effectively peers. National powerhouses chasing all the same glittering prizes, with equally reasonable ambitions of securing them.

In that way, Saturday will feel unlike anything we’ve ever collectively experienced before. It is why aforementioned hyperbole applies here, regardless of the outcome.

This game stands every chance of delivering a college football classic that will help shape and define the season that frames its place in time.

At the center of it all will be a coach standing atop his sport, searching for the answer most fundamental to his profession. Because even as he reaches the halfway point in this season, Curt Cignetti still doesn’t know what kind of team he’s got.

How good is IU football, Jeremiah Smith, Indiana defense?

“Two really good teams. Great team we’re playing. Not sure how good we are yet.”

Cignetti delivered those words more honestly than earnestly. Said while he was caught between reflecting on a narrow escape at Nebraska and the mammoth challenge of Ohio State, they came across as perhaps the most honest thing a coach can say.

Two things can be true at once. First, Indiana remains undefeated, despite being seriously tested by two teams (Northwestern and Nebraska) that are probably at least a little bit better than we expected them to be when the season began. And second, that Cignetti has every right to wonder just how good his team is right now.

Indiana has reached the turn of the regular season with one of the most explosive offenses in the Power Four, but also sometimes one of the least efficient. Its defense once again looks like a havoc-wreaking outfit capable of terrorizing the best quarterbacks and flustering the best coordinators. That defense also shows just enough inconsistency, with just enough holes in performance, depth or both, for us to wonder whether it can return to a championship standard in time for the College Football Playoff.

No one is better positioned to test those weaknesses than Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith. The current Heisman frontrunner, Smith (48 catches, 916 yards, 11 touchdowns) might be the best wide receiver the college game has seen since Julio Jones. His highlights are as eye-popping as his numbers. Cignetti called him “a wow player.”

“That’s really the only word to describe him I can think of,” Cignetti said.

Owing to his connection with second-year starting quarterback Julian Sayin, Smith seems purpose-built to test a secondary that’s been pedestrian at best in limiting explosive plays through six games this fall.

Yet the same can be said for Indiana’s pass rush, which leads the Big Ten in both sacks and tackles for loss, and now prepares for an Ohio State line with protection problems and at least one notable absence. Austin Siereveld, the Buckeyes’ all-conference lineman, will miss Saturday’s game through illness, problematic for a team that’s allowed 21 sacks in its last eight games.

The first of those eight was last season’s Big Ten title game, when Indiana sacked Sayin five times. And while he’s got more leash to scramble than he did a season ago, Sayin does not possess the dual-threat ability of counterparts like Aidan Chiles and Anthony Colandrea, whose mobility has created conflict for coordinator Bryant Haines’ defense this season.

Can Sayin get through his progressions quickly enough to find Smith, before the Indiana pass rush finds him?

As much as anything else, Saturday might turn out to be a race against time.

100th IU-Ohio State football game carries largest stakes

No game of this magnitude can be so easily reduced, of course. There are too many layers here to unpack them all.

This matchup, more than 10 months in the making, drips with intricacy and intrigue. It could (and very well might) determine the course of one or both teams’ seasons. Like the last game between these two programs, it can turn on the smallest moments, and yet the stage itself could not be bigger.

Saturday will mark the 100^th game all time between Indiana and Ohio State. Not once in their shared history has one felt like this.

It should make for an outstanding watch.

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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Indiana-Ohio State football game will deliver something we've never seen before