We're No. 17 (or 18)!

 There's gonna be one hell of a rivalry game come November, if the smart guys are right about this. Indiana vs. Purdue for a wooden bucket, boy howdy. Winner gets to add an "I" or a "P" to the bucket's chain; loser gets a broom and a dustpan to sweep up after everyone else, like a street worker at the tail end of a parade.

Football media days for the new XXL Big Whatever are happening this week in Indianapolis, see, and that means the preseason media rankings are out. Ohio State was picked to win the conference. Indiana and Purdue, meanwhile, were picked to finish 17th and 18th, respectively.

That's next-to-last and last in XXL-speak, in case you were wondering.

(Quick aside: Newcomer Oregon was picked to finish second. This did not, however, include the fact they won the media days outright by launching a giant inflatable Oregon Duck in the White River that courses through Indy. Bravo, gentlemen.)

Anyway ...

Needless to say, getting picked next-to-last and last is quite a back of the hand to big-boy college football in our proud state, and I fully expect Jim Banks or one of the other halfwits to launch an investigation any day now. Surely the Deep State is behind this, or maybe DEI. Perhaps Critical Race Theory played a role.

The reaction in Bloomington and West Lafayette, meanwhile, is likely to be a lot of fist-shaking and we'll-show-you, with a hefty side of MY GOD YOU'VE EVEN GOT NORTHWESTERN AHEAD OF US. Both new Indiana coach Curt Cignetti and second-year Purdue coach Ryan Walters are sure to use it as motivation, although how much remains open to question. This is just the media saying they're both going to suck, after all.

It will be especially instructive to see how Cignetti reacts, seeing how he's been so swagger-y for a guy taking over a program with such threadbare tradition. As the immortal Dan Jenkins once famously wrote, Indiana's record in football is right up there with Germany's record in world wars. Yet Cignetti has brought in a bunch of new guys, and he remains insistent Indiana will win right now because, after all, he, Curt Cignetti, has won everywhere he's been.

The flaw in that bravado: Everywhere he's been does not include the XXL Big Whatever.

At any rate, we shall see. Going transcontinental by adding USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon to the mix will surely shake up the power structure. And it's hard to imagine that shake-up won't sift programs that have not been at the top of that structure further toward the bottom.

Programs like, you know, IU and Purdue.

"(Bleep) you!" comes the response from Bloomington and West Lafayette.

Or so one imagines.