Sunday, September 6, 2015

Meanwhile, in Bloomington ...

So the other day I'm chatting with a guy who lives and dies with what goes on down in Bloomington, and we got to talking about the Hoosiers' prospects on the gridiron this year, and I said, "Well, if they can keep Nate Sudfeld upright, they'll be OK."

And so the good news from IU yesterday: They kept Sudfeld upright, and the Indiana quarterback engineered 48 points in a win over Southern Illinois.

The bad news: The defense is just as prostrate as ever.

This after they turned a quarterback named Mark Iannotti into Mark Football, with the consequence that the Hoosiers only won 48-47. Along the way, Iannotti reduced the Indiana defense into 11 guys unsuccessfully trying to hail a cab, throwing for 411 yards and four touchdowns and running for 106 yards and another score.

Mathematicians will quickly deduce this comes out to 517 yards and five scores for Iannotti, a career for some and surely, in this case, an occasion for canonization in Carbondale. Big Ten schools have made a tradition of struggling with lesser foes in the early weeks of the season, so maybe this is not the cause for concern it appears to be. But when the particular tradition at IU is to put defenses on the field that can't stop inert matter, perhaps it is.

In any case, it's a W. And Sudfeld's still upright. And, well, that's something.

At least for now.

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