Divergence

 Watched a bit of two teams' football games yesterday, and it was like Robert Frost's two roads diverging in a yellow wood. One team was taking the well-trodden route; the other, the road less traveled by.

The teams were Indiana and Purdue. I'll let you figure out which was which.

Indiana, hard by the shore of Lake Michigan in Northwestern's temporary digs, let the Wildcats hang around too long but pulled away late to win 41-24. It was the Hoosiers' sixth victory in six games, and they're ranked now, and in five of their six wins they've scored at least 40 points.

Oh yeah: They also became the first team in FBS to become bowl-eligible. Indiana, for pity's sake.

If you had that one in the office pool, the drinks are on you tonight.

And Purdue?

Oh, me, oh, my. The Boilermakers got romped again, 52-6 by Wisconsin, and, good lord, what a vacant lot of a football team. Wisconsin is not known for its wide receivers, but the Badgers' wideouts frolicked through Purdue's secondary like antelope at play, catching balls in the clear and then outrunning one, two, three Purdue DBs like they were statuary. The speed differential was both obvious and embarrassing.

Wisky's backup quarterback, Braedyn Locke, threw for 359 yards and three scores for a team that's traditionally lived by the run. Purdue's best players, meanwhile, continued to struggle; talented tight end Max Klare caught just two balls for 26 yards, and stellar running back Devin Mockobee again had nowhere to go far too often, squeezing out 45 yards on 11 carries.

In short, Purdue is a program devolving before our eyes, and the worst part for second-year head coach Ryan Walters is what's happening in Bloomington under first-year coach Curt Cignetti. Coach Cig brought in a bunch of transfers from his powerhouse James Madison team, and snagged fifth-year senior quarterback Kurtis Rourke from Ohio in the MAC, and, voila, the Hoosiers are a new-look team that hardly resembles your traditional Hoosiers.

In other words, they're clocking people, instead of the other way around. The makeover has been instant and thorough.

And, yes, a big reason for that is Cignetti has a significant NIL war chest to play with, and he's used it and the unrestricted transfer portal to do what successful programs do in 2024, which is transform his program almost instantly. It's not like the old heads used to do it, bringing in blue-chip freshmen and molding them into a juggernaut across four years.

Well, later for that, in our instant gratification world. College football is Mercenary Ball now, and if you're slow to accept or adjust to that new reality, you get left behind. My wife Julie, a lifelong IU basketball fan if not much of a football fan, has taken to calling Cignetti's team the Rent-A-Hoosiers. I say, yes, they are, and the sky is blue. Everyone's a Rent-A-Something now, and there's nothing for it except to become one yourself.

Which brings us back to Purdue.

If they're the Rent-A-Boilers they don't seem to have played that game as aggressively as their rival to the south, and maybe that is or isn't because Purdue's athletic administration has been less aggressive in building its own NIL war chest. I honestly don't know, and so I'm reluctant to say that with stone certainty.

But to the naked eye, and with some notable exceptions, it seems obvious the Boilermakers are a significantly under-talented Big Ten football team.  And that Walters is either out of his depth or close to it. Which is why right now they're clearly the worst team in the conference.

And Indiana, suddenly, is among the best, or at least looks capable of hanging with the best. It's worth noting that the meat of the schedule -- Nebraska, Washington, Michigan, Ohio State -- lies just ahead, which means 6-0 Indiana could become 7-4 Indiana in a hurry. 

Or, you know, not.  Strange things, and sometimes wonderful things, happen when two roads diverge in a yellow wood.