Same old, same old

You knew this was coming, if you were at all upright and sentient. How many times does Lucy have to yank the football away? How many times does the pea in the shell game have to elude the rubes along the midway?

And so, yes, Ohio State 51, Indiana 10, and same old Who-Who-Hoosiers. The day of football relevance may yet be coming, but then we always believe the day Lucy lets Charlie Brown kick the ball is coming, too, don't we?

And so you knew in your bones what was going to happen, when the usual preseason hype ended. All that talk about how this IU team was different, how it had athletes on both sides of the football who were as elite as anyone else's, how this was the long-awaited turning of that long-established corner  ...

Well. You still smelled 6-6 in the wind, despite all that. You still smelled 6-6 and a date in some radial tire bowl if the Hoosiers were lucky, and sub-.500 and a date in the Home Alone Bowl if they weren't.

And sure, I get it, it's still only mid-September, and the Hoosiers could yet prove me wrong. And maybe it's different yesterday if Michael Penix Jr., a legit game-changer at quarterback, had played. But I really don't think it would have been all that different.

See, I have watched these Hoosiers twice now, once in person against Ball State and once on TV, and I didn't see anything I haven't seen before from them. Against Ball State, a middling MAC offense went up and down the field on Indiana's allegedly stouter, more athletic defense, scoring 24 points. Ohio State moved the football with absurd ease yesterday. Indiana, it seems, is still Indiana.

Which is to say, college football lives on its traditional rivalries, and Indiana's fiercest traditional rival has always been its own history. It's been the '67 Rose Bowl and the Bill Mallory era and maybe a couple other teams, and then a whole lot of beige. It's been Pihos and Gonso and Isenbarger, Butcher and Anthony Thompson and Taliaferro and Randall-El, and then ...

And then a whole lot Dennis Cremeans and Ted McNulty. And Ohio State 51, Indiana 10.

Next week?

Next week the Hoosiers get UConn, a game they should win. They also have Rutgers on the schedule, another game they should win. Beyond that ...

Beyond that, hope springs eternal. Maybe Lucy won't yank the football away this time.