Indiana Football: Hoosiers staring ‘program-changing’ win in face

The Indiana football program has a ‘program-changing’ opportunity this weekend when Ohio State comes to Bloomington on Saturday.

No matter how much the players and coaches say it’s just ‘another week’, it’s not. The Indiana football program has been waiting for this game, and there’s no doubt this would be a program changing win if the Hoosiers come out on top on Saturday.

The Ohio State Buckeyes are not only the staple of the Big Ten, but they are one of the staples in all of college football. From Jim Tressel, to Urban Meyer, Ryan Day is the newest face of the Buckeyes and once again has as talented a team as there is in the country.

Whether it be Michigan, Ohio State, or Penn State, Indiana has been involved in some close games that go down to the wire over the past five seasons, but one thing they were never able to do was finish. This year seems to be different.

Indiana coach Tom Allen talked about it this offseason, how important it was to have depth, and talented depth for games like this Saturday. The top teams in the country not only have starters that are some of the best at their positions, but even have reserves that could start almost anywhere else.

Indiana now has the talent to compete atop the Big Ten and more importantly the depth to do so, but enough talking about it, we need to see it.

"“And we have to play extremely hard, we have to play extremely well, we have to play extremely physical, and we have to do it for 60 minutes, not 50, not 40. It’s got to be 60. And that to me is the next step for this program and this game.” Allen said at Monday’s press conference."

Quite honestly, this may be as even a playing field in terms of talent on both the IU and Ohio State roster as there has been in the past 25 years, and if Indiana wants to take that next step as a program, Saturday is the perfect opportunity to do so.

"“We always like to say, and those are definitely program-changing, program-defining wins that affect recruiting and affect the trajectory of your program.”"

The recruiting has reached the highest level of talent in the past decade for Indiana and like Tom Allen said, a win of this caliber would change the trajectory of the IU program and help the Hoosiers reach that ‘next level’ of recruiting and winning.