A look back.
Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of Indiana’s 2025 football schedule has been set in stone since 2023, when the conference released the entirety of the Big Ten scheduling from 2024-2028.
We even blogged about it, at the time.
Now, before we get into the meat of the schedule, it’s worth acknowledging that the coaching change in 2024 caused possibly the most drastic change in perspective that a fanbase could endure. There will never be another team like the 2024 Indiana Hoosiers.
The fact that the strength of Indiana’s schedule would even become the topic of national football discourse in 2024 and again in 2025 was absolutely inconceivable under Tom Allen.
What hasn’t changed, however, was that the Big Ten East was a torture chamber designed to relegate all but Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State for a bit to mediocre bowl games against other six or seven win teams.
Looking back at the blog and the comments, that was the main concern: would the dissolution of the Big Ten East allow Indiana to claw itself out of the Big Ten’s middle tier? Or would the ceiling remain roughly the same as it has been for at least the last two coaching tenures?
While the consensus seemed to have been that it was a blessing not to have the Buckeyes, Wolverines, and Nittany Lions guaranteed every year, nobody necessarily thought the schedule got easier, per se.
The upcoming trip to Eugene this October was as intimidating then as it is now. As we noted at the time, Indiana still faced two of the three Big Ten East powers in 2024, but wound up beating the defending champion Wolverines on national TV. Iowa, UCLA, and Wisconsin are a tougher trio than Maryland, Rutgers, and Michigan State were in the old format.
How Indiana fares this year and its place in the overall national football landscape haven’t been decided, but for most of us, the debate about Indiana’s schedule has been settled for a long time now.
With or without Virginia on the schedule, the nine game, coast-to-coast conference schedule did not make things easier for Indiana. By all accounts, the 2025 schedule is harder than what the Hoosiers would have seen in an average Big Ten East season.
The team just got that much better.
Before engaging with somebody who tries to, in bad faith, pin the Louisville cancelations of the Late-Allen era on Cignetti and his staff, take a second to appreciate being in position to have that argument in the first place.