Indiana Football: Special season will end in Florida and with optimism
By Adam Childs
The Indiana football team will play in the Gator Bowl on January 2nd in Jacksonville, Florida. It is a fitting ending to a great season for the Hoosiers.
Sunday the Hoosiers found out that they would be heading to Florida for a bowl game for the first time in program history. It is a fitting end to what has been a great year. If you take out their performances against Michigan and Ohio State, the Hoosier faithful have to be excited about how their team played this year.
Indiana played toe-to-toe with Penn State and Michigan State in their other two losses and in the end were a better team than the Spartans. But to go into Happy Valley and almost come away with a win against the Nittany Lions is something to be proud of. Tom Allen isn’t all for moral victories but to show they could compete with one of the Big Ten’s elite teams on the road has shown how far this Hoosier team has come.
Every week it seemed like we were talking about the Hoosiers doing something they haven’t done in a long time. Think about the things they have accomplished this year:
-First 8 win season since 1993
-First winning conference record since 1993
-First bowl game in 3 years’
-A chance for their first 9 win season since 1987 and only third in the history of the program
-First bowl game ever in the state of Florida
They did most of this with their starting quarterback, Michael Penix Jr, being hurt. But Peyton Ramsey stayed tough through losing his job and stepped in and the Hoosiers didn’t miss a beat.
Indiana had one of the best receivers in the conference in Whop Philyor and one of the most reliable backs in Stevie Scott. The supporting cast did a great job and the defense continued to improve throughout the year (as long as we forget about the Michigan game).
Tom Allen has brought a sense of family to this program and they get to cap it all off with a trip to the Sunshine State. It is a huge deal for the Hoosiers to play in a New Year’s bowl (I know it’s on January 2, but still the new year). Indiana already has a ton of players from the state of Florida and this will be a great homecoming and improve recruiting.
In the past, the Hoosiers would have a good year and fade back away, but this feels different. They still have a ways to go to catch Ohio State and even Michigan and Penn State, but they are closing the gap. Playing the Hoosiers is no longer a pushover and the rest of the Big Ten knows it.
We get to see the Hoosiers one more time but we have to wait until January and none of the Hoosiers fans care they have to wait that long.
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Win or lose this is something to be celebrated, but they can beat Tennessee and getting a win against an SEC opponent is impressive.
The bowl game in Florida hopefully is the continuation of a great year into the start of something long-lasting. Indiana fans should be optimistic about the future, all signs point towards up.