Da prediction

 Every day now people ask me what I think, usually people dressed in IU red this or IU red that. I tell them I don't know what to think. I'm tempted to add this is because thinking hurts when you get to be my age.

They ask anyway.

"So, what do you think? Indiana or Oregon?" they say.

"Beats me," I reply. "Besides, I'm almost always wrong about these things."

It's that "almost" that's hanging me up here.

See, Indiana-Oregon in the Peach Bowl tonight for a berth opposite Miami in the national championship game is one of those conventional wisdom deals, and so it ought to be an easy call. Conventional wisdom says it's hard -- damned hard -- to beat a really good football team twice in one season, and Oregon is a really good football team. Indiana beat the Ducks 30-20 in Eugene back in October, so ...

So, conventional wisdom says it's Oregon all the way. The Ducks have their own sideline wizard in Dan Lanning. They've got their own stud quarterback in Dante Moore. They've got athletes just like Indiana has athletes.

However ...

However, there is this: Indiana eats conventional wisdom for breakfast.

The Hoosiers, see, are as unconventional as they are undefeated, which is why some people still think they're a trick of the light. They've got a 64-year-old head coach who's now 25-2 in his first major-league job, and an OK quarterback who somehow morphed into a Heisman Trophy winner after transferring from Cal to IU. They're the unconventional wrapped in the improbable, these guys.

Which is maybe why last week they became the only team in the two-year history of the 12-team College Football Playoff to actually win its first-round game. This year, Georgia lost and Texas Tech lost and Ohio State lost. Indiana didn't just win, but paved lordly Alabama like an off-ramp, 38-3.

The Hoosiers were a machine in that game, their first Rose Bowl victory ever (and only their second trip to Pasadena). It was yet another convention-trashing moment for a school whose national perception still is skewed by a football lineage that is ... well, somewhat less regal than Alabama's.

Andnow  here we go again: In two years of the 12-team CFP, every rematch has gone to the team that lost the first meeting -- the latest, of course, being Ole Miss taking down Georgia in the Sugar Bowl after losing to the Bulldogs earlier in the season.

This bodes well for the Ducks, to reiterate. Or would, if they were playing anyone but Indiana.

Let's call it this way, then:

Indiana 30, Oregon 26.