Indiana’s first loss in almost 2 years shows Hoosiers a new, painful side to being in college football’s top tier

Descending the stairwell back to Earth — after a delirious 22-game win streak came screeching to a stunning end, after the biggest football game in a generation on the Indiana campus fizzled to a disastrous 19-15 loss to Ohio State on a boneheaded play more reminiscent of the pre-delirium era — Indiana football officially arrived. Fans who opted to walk down from the top of Memorial Stadium rather than take the elevator took turns venting their frustration about the loss, their ire growing as if they were descending through Dante’s levels of Hell. The first circle belonged to Nick Marsh, who — if you’re being kind — mistimed his fancy footwork (or, if you were in the stairwell, wildly fouled up). On fourth-and-four — fourth-and-ballgame, fourth-and-win streak, fourth-and-dethroning Big Ten royalty Ohio State — Marsh snuck to the left edge of the end zone. He was so wide open that, when TV cameras showed the replay, there was literally no one else - not an Indiana player, not an Ohio State defender - in the shot. The Hoosiers paid handsomely for their big pickup via the transfer portal, luring him from Michigan State. Marsh easily hauled in the pass from Josh Hoover and took a step into the end zone. Or at least that was the idea. On Marsh’s first step, he casually put down his left foot and the outside edge of his cleat caught the white edge that rims the red paint marking out of bounds. As in-game operators mistakenly shot off fireworks, Marsh put his hands on his head, immediately aware of his mistake. No touchdown. No win. No win streak. No unseating the kings. “Butt naked f**king wide open,’’ one fan screamed as he marched down the stairs. Another bemoaned the amount of money spent on Marsh’s NIL deal, using similar obscene language. Spiraling downward, next came Josh Howard’s undressing. The TCU transfer quarterback completed 20 of 40 passes, regularly sailing passes over even the super-glue-sure hands of Charlie Becker. He wasn’t awful, but he wasn’t great, committing the cardinal sin of being human. That is not a familiar affliction here, not after the practically sainted Fernando Mendoza taught people about fiscal responsibility, hobnobbed with priests at the local Catholic church, charmed mothers and zinged passes on Saturdays like a video game avatar. “It wouldn’t have come to this,’’ a woman screamed over her shoulder to a trailing pack of similarly combustible Hoosiers, “if we didn’t f**k around.’’ And finally, as the stairway gave way to the ground, there came the final hard smack of reality. Thousands of people, accustomed to leaving their gridiron grounds in glee, were rendered near speechless as they morosely walked out the gates. One man, summing up the shock, anger and frustration for everyone, stared straight ahead and at one in particular, gathering up whatever air was left in his lungs and yelled one more f-bomb for good measure. Indiana becomes a football school Welcome to success, Indiana. Isn’t it awful? It begets the most precious and precarious gift of all in sports - the joy and misery of expectation. In the grand scheme of things, in the 2026 football season that remains very much viable for the Hoosiers, this loss is barely a flesh wound. But forgive Indiana fans their level of reaction. They have not tasted this particular pleasant poison before. For the past two-plus seasons, happy Hoosier fans have lived in a near-fugue state, their historically impossibly awful team becoming the best in the land. Until this glorious fall Saturday afternoon gave way to the hints of early evening, Indiana football — once the losingest team in all of college football — hadn’t tasted their ordinary helping of defeat for 666 days. Counted in that giddy stretch of unexpected euphoria was actual perfection, a run from August through January without defeat, capped off with, of all ridiculous things, a national championship. So new was the entire concept of winning that, for a hot minute, it was fair to question if Indiana really understood its new place in the hierarchy. It still felt quaint, as if IU hadn’t quite embraced the arrogance they suddenly were in ownership of. Fans walked around downtown in gear declaring their dominance - national championship tees and Rose Bowl jackets - and businesses hung signs in homage to their head coach’s brashness. A blackboard outside of Pitaya, a women’s clothing store, cleverly declared, “It’s simple. We’re the cutest. Google us,” referring to Curt Cignetti’s introductory words at his first press conference - though odds are strong that the coach never much worried about his OOTD (outfit of the day). But a bartender’s lament about the overwhelming crowd mid-afternoon at The Tap felt a little, well, misplaced. The place was full, but compared to Oxford, Mississippi a month ago or State College on the eve of a white out, it didn’t quite hit the mayhem stage. There was no line to get in. Even the wait at the popular Nick’s Hut was short up until at least 4 p.m. And while the marquee on the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre declared, “Buckle Up, Buckeyes. This is Hoosier Country,’’ Ohio State fans walked around town largely unmolested. Try that during, say, “The Game” between Ohio State and Michigan next month, or during the Iron Bowl at either Auburn or Alabama. To be fair, Bloomington eventually got its dog on. People started lining up pre-dawn to find a place in the Breakfast Club, the morning drinking gameday den at The Upstairs Pub, and the tailgating lots were full despite the noon kickoff. It still felt Midwest polite. ‘It sucks, you know?’ Until it wasn’t. Because it was not just the loss but the way IU lost that stung. Under Cignetti, the Hoosiers have been equal parts flawless and gutty, refusing to make mistakes to lose games and always finding ways to win them. They named a popular beer here the 4th and 5 Cream Ale, in reference and deference to Mendoza’s gutty 12-yard touchdown run in the national title game on fourth and five. That was the standard. A week after the defense was gashed by Nebraska, the offense sputtered to find its rhythm. “It sucks, you know?” Becker said. “There were a lot of opportunities, a lot of areas we could have capitalized on. We left a lot short here and that’s frustrating to feel like we kind of beat ourselves in this game.” Trailing 7-3, Indiana drove to the Buckeyes’ 14, but Hoover missed a wide-open Brock Schott on third down. A doinked field goal off the left upright left Indiana with nothing to show for its 66-yard drive. To start the second half, Hoover found Davion Chandler for a quick slant, but Chandler fumbled, the first time the Hoosiers had coughed up the ball in 1,437 plays. Another third-quarter possession ended at Ohio State’s 33, when Hoover was panicked on a blindside blitz and after a miscommunication on third-and-six late in the third, Cignetti had to settle for a 55-yard field goal try. It didn’t work. The most painful, of course, came as it always does - at the end. In what may count as the real biggest news out of this game, Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin left the game after a sack in the fourth quarter. Buckeye coach Ryan Day said he will be out “several weeks,’’ which might cause a legit shakeup not just in the Big Ten, but in the national title race and the Heisman chase (star wide receiver Jeremiah Smith could use his QB to get him the ball). Backup Luke Fahey did his best to not drown as the Buckeyes held the slim 4–point lead, but when Hoover and the Hoosiers started marching down the field with time closing, it felt like another miracle in the making. Indiana has hosted exactly three ranked-on-ranked games since 1993 - entirely because Indiana for so long wasn’t ranked - and one came during the Covid-19 pandemic when 1,034 showed up to watch No. 23 IU versus No. 22 Michigan State. This, No. 5 Indiana versus No. 4 Ohio State, was the big one. Though the Hoosiers bested the Buckeyes in last year’s Big Ten Championship and won the title, Ohio State remains the Big Ten standard. In its entire existence, Indiana beat OSU at home twice, once in 1988 when then the stench of the loss bothered Ohio State coach John Cooper so much that he remarked afterward, “they are either a great football team or we are pathetic,” and once in 1904, when Frank ‘Bunny’ Hare scored on two dropkicks for an 8-0 win, inspiring Indiana students to go wild “parading in the streets clad in their night shirts,” per the Indianapolis Star. And with the win and all of that history right there in his hands, all Marsh had to do was put his foot down. “It’s not Nick’s fault, right?” Hoover said. “Like if I put it a little bit further inside, it’s an easy catch, right?” Hoover said. Smarting and humbled, the players insisted that this will only make them better but they, too, have been spoiled by success. This season has been pockmarked by teams winning big games and falling flat the next; Indiana has to go to Michigan next week to try and buck that trend. “The sun will come up tomorrow,” said Cignetti, whose Little Orphan Annie-esque optimism might have been only slightly less unsettling than the actual loss. “Everything is still ahead of us. We can accomplish everything that we want except going undefeated.” A fair, reasonable summation, even if people here aren’t in the mood right now to be fair or reasonable