Indiana Football: Is Big Ten title ever a possibility for Hoosiers?

The Indiana football team had a great season in 2019 and won eight games. But even with the improvement, the Big Ten title is still a long way away.

When Rutgers and Maryland joined the Big Ten conference in 2014, the conference realigned the divisions for football. It was a natural East and West division except for two teams. Purdue and Indiana. In what would be a stroke of luck for Purdue, the Boilermakers were sent to the West while the Hoosiers were assigned to the East.

It was a decision that basically doomed the Hoosiers to never being able to win a Big Ten title. You hate to say never, but with as tough as the Big Ten East is, it is almost a definite. The East might be the best division in all of college football, with Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan State all in the division.

While the East is stacked, the West is not. Wisconsin has been good lately, but they haven’t always been a power. Iowa is tough at home and Minnesota had a resurgence this year, but haven’t been traditionally good. Northwestern is solid, but not great. Nebraska has fallen on tough times and Illinois hasn’t exactly been the best either. Purdue is the only other team in there and Indiana has proven they can beat them.

The West is such a toss-up that Nebraska was picked by many to win the division this year. It is not nearly the gauntlet that the East is and every team has to feel like they have a shot when the season starts.

The East, on the other hand, feels like a lost cause for Rutgers, Maryland, and Indiana, as they have to battle it out with the big four every year. The Hoosiers had their best season in a while in 2019 and still finished fourth in the East.

So do the Hoosiers ever have a shot at winning the Big Ten? The short answer is probably not, but the longer answer is maybe.

There have been some rumblings of realigning the divisions to try and get a more competitive balance. With no disrespect to Wisconsin, many think the top four teams are in the East. The thought is if Wisconsin played in the East they wouldn’t be nearly as good each year.

If they were to switch up the divisions it would then give some of the lower teams, especially in the East, a chance to feel like they had shot at a conference crown. They wouldn’t have to pull off as many upsets to do it. The Boilermakers, for example, currently only have to really upset Wisconsin and then win games that they are close to or equal to and they have a shot at the West.

Imagine the Hoosiers being in that same situation. This year they could have had a realistic shot going into the year, instead of just hoping to finish in front of one of the top four teams. Which they did over Michigan State, but they still lost to them.

The Hoosiers have only one Big Ten Championship in football and that came way back in 1945. If the divisions stay the same it may stay that way for a long time. But maybe the divisions get realigned and the Hoosiers finally see a chance.

But until that happens a conference championship might just be a pipe dream.