Strange new world*

 (*Though not really)

Which is to say, Indiana won another football game yesterday, and now the Hoosiers are 10-0 for the first time in a history that goes back to Grover Cleveland, and the school is already trying to figure out how to keep everyone else's mitts off the architect of all this, first-year head coach Curt Cignetti.

What's strange about this, as the Blob observed last week, is that ten games into the Coach Cig Era, it's already ceased to become strange. Occasionally, however, vertigo does pay a visit. You close your eyes and the room swims, and for a second or two the world is upside-down and whopperjawed.

Yesterday, for instance, the Hoosiers were driving and night had come down and Memorial Stadium was a swaying, howling sea of red there in the dark, and Michigan was just two points adrift. Eventually Kurtis Rourke got them close enough for a field goal to push the lead to five, 20-15, and then Michigan ran out of downs shy of midfield with a minute-and-a-half left, and W No. 10 was secure.

That wasn't what turned everything upside-down, however.

It was what one of the guys in the CBS booth said.

"Michigan came here looking for the upset," he said.

Michigan. Looking for the upset. Against Indiana. 

When's the last time you heard that?

Because, listen, in all the long and mostly beige history of Indiana football, it's always been the Hoosiers looking to upset Michigan. And failing spectacularly, in most cases. 

Some numbers: With yesterday's win, has beaten Michigan exactly 11 times in 73 meetings dating back to the turn of the last century. Eleven times in 124 years. And the Hoosiers didn't beat the Wolverines for the first time until 1928 -- which means it took them nearly three decades just to beat them once. 

But yesterday?

Indiana came in 9-0 and ranked eighth. Michigan, the defending national champions, came in 5-4 and unranked. So, yeah, the Wolverines were the decided underdogs for once.

But the Hoosiers survived. Brought, I don't know, their B-minus game, and still won. Which says they're at least as good as their ranking, and certainly better than some national folks still regard them.

I mean, come on. It's Indiana. Surely they're not THAT good, right?

Well ... they are. Bizarrely so, simply because it no longer feels bizarre. Looking ahead to the big clash in Columbus against No. 2 Ohio State in two weeks -- which prompted my friend and former sportswriting colleague Jim Saturday to make the following observation: "Who woulda thunk that Michigan would be a trap game?"

Strange new world, indeed.