Wrong again

 Well, I'll be bumfuzzled, to quote the late Bobby Bowden.

Sat in my TV room with friends last night and saw Ohio State take a 10-6 lead into halftime in the Big Ten championship game, and thought, yeah, that tracks. This was going the way I thought it would go. This was going to wind up something along the lines of Ohio State 24, Indiana 13, and I would be RIGHT, dammit, the Prognosticator of the Year, the Seer Without Peer in the realm of predictin' who wins a dadgum football game.

And then ...

Ah, yes. And then.

And then here was Fernando Mendoza making a perfect back-shoulder throw to Elijah Sarratt, who made a perfect catch even though he was perfectly covered, and suddenly Indiana led 13-10 and the game was down to the fourth quarter, and the Buckeyes hadn't dented the scoreboard in the second half.

And then Ohio State chewed up almost eight minutes on a 15-play, 81-yard drive that went on and on and finally ground to a halt within spitting distance of the Hoosier goal line, and the Buckeyes' placekicker came on to tie it up with a field goal that, had it been golf, would have been on the fringe, and OHMIGOD WHAT IS THIS HE YANKED IT LEFT ...

And Indiana still led 13-10. And now there was just 2:48 left on the clock, and here was Mendoza making another perfect throw, this time to Charlie Becker, for 33 yards and a first down.

After which Ohio State had to burn all its timeouts, and pretty soon there were just 24 seconds left and the Hoosiers were pooching a kick and the Buckeyes were downing it on the 14-yard line with 18 seconds left. Which meant they had to go 86 yards in the time it takes to, I don't know, warm up a cinnamon roll in the microwave or something.

They didn't, of course.

The Hoosiers knocked down a couple of throws and Jeremiah Smith caught a meaningless deep ball in traffic as the clock ran out, and No. 2 Indiana won the Big Ten title 13-10 over the No. 1, defending national champion Buckeyes. And like most of America. the Blob is still trying to process it.

I mean, come on, a year after Curt Cignetti showed up in Bloomington to take over one of the historically worst programs in major college football, the Hoosiers are 13-0 and conference champs for the first time in 58 years. They're also headed to the College Football Playoff as the No. 1 team in the nation for the first time ever.

And to do it, they held an Ohio State team that came in averaging a shade under 36 points per game to 10 points.

And all but silenced the Buckeyes' running game, which coughed out a miniscule 2.2 yards for rush and 58 yards against the Hoosiers' defensive front. 

And sacked Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin five times and intercepted him once.

And, finally, snapped a 30-game losing streak to the Columbus behemoth. Last time the Hoosiers beat the Buckeyes was 1988, when Anthony Thompson gashed the Bucks for 190 yards and four scores in a 41-7 blowout. 

Anthony Thompson. Who is 58 years old now.

Me?

I'm 70. And I've never seen the like of it.