Indiana's biggest home game ever will reveal just how far Curt Cignetti has taken the Hoosiers

Curt Cignetti's tenure at Indiana already includes a national championship, a Big Ten title, a 22-game winning streak and an absurd 94% win rate.

Deliver one of those forever moments in Memorial Stadium against the kind of elite opponent the Hoosiers will face on Saturday in Ohio State.

"I'm glad we're playing them at home," Cignetti said this week. "We really need our crowd to be loud and very involved. We have to give them reasons to be. It's just a football game, but I'm glad it's at home."

Though Indiana gets knocked plenty for its scheduling — well, at least until Cignetti lifted the trophy down in Miami nine months ago — this much was out of the Hoosiers' control. It's taken until Cignetti's 23rd Big Ten game to get a crack at Ohio State on Indiana's home field.

And though the stakes are not quite do-or-die for either team this week, this promises to be one of those tentpole games that is going to define how we think about the rest of the season.

"It's a great team we're playing," Cignetti said. "I'm not sure how good we are yet."

That part is Indiana's fault to some degree.

While Ohio State took the risk of playing at Texas in Week 2 — a game the Buckeyes lost, 24-23 — Indiana's non-conference schedule included the likes of North Texas, Howard and Western Kentucky and eased into Big Ten play with Northwestern (a tougher game than expected, to be fair) and Rutgers.

The first time Indiana trailed all season came last week at Nebraska, and things looked dire after falling behind 17-6 early in the fourth quarter. But from that moment on, the Hoosiers flipped a switch and dominated the rest of the game, pulling off a 20-17 comeback.

"It was a gut check," Cignetti said. "It would have been easy to let that game get away from you in the first half and we hung in there. Good win."

Now here comes mighty Ohio State, having cruised through four blowout victories since the Texas loss, looking every bit like the No. 1-ranked team they were in the preseason.

It's undeniably the biggest football game and maybe biggest sporting event period that's ever been played in Bloomington.

It also underscores how inequitable scheduling can be in a league as large and unwieldy as the Big Ten.

This iteration of the league has four traditional blue bloods in Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and USC, plus a modern blue blood in Oregon. Midway through his third year at Indiana, Cignetti has compiled a 5-1 record against those programs.

Only one of those games has taken place at home: A 20-15 win over Michigan in 2024 after the Wolverines had dropped out of the top-25.

Point being, we don't really have a frame of reference for the Indiana Experience at full tilt in Bloomington and what kind of home-field advantage it can create. Having a top-five Ohio State team visiting undefeated Indiana as defending national champion is something entirely new for the program, the Big Ten and all of college football. And given everything Cignetti has accomplished to lift this program into perennial contender status, it's even more impressive that he's done it without the benefit of many big games at home.

Is Indiana as good as it was last year? The close calls against Northwestern and Nebraska would suggest not. But are the Hoosiers good enough, with a home crowd behind them, to play their best game of the year Saturday and put themselves in contention for the No. 1 playoff seed?

Make no mistake, we're going to learn a lot about Ohio State too. The fourth-quarter collapse at Texas was forgivable given the opponent and the stifling heat that progressively wore down their defense as the game went on.

Now, the Buckeyes begin a five-game stretch of their schedule that also includes a trips to USC and Nebraska, plus home games against Oregon and Northwestern, an impressive 4-1 team that we can throw into the category of CFP contender until proven otherwise.

That schedule might allow the Buckeyes a little more margin for error than most teams, but this is a huge moment for them heading into the second half of the season. There is a massive difference for Ohio State in its playoff standing between going into a bye week at 6-1 or 5-2 having lost to the two best teams on its schedule.

"We know what this means for their program, for our program," Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. "So the good news is we've already been in a couple of these. Everyone has to be tough. When you're on the road, handling the noise and getting a win like this on the road is going to take everybody."

It's a moment to relish. With the 24-team playoff appearing to be a near-certainty for next season , games like this will exist in a different context because the outcome will have little bearing at all on whether either team makes the CFP. It will simply be a data point that comes into play for seeding purposes, which isn't quite as romantic as the idea of an October clash in Bloomington between top-10 teams who both need a big win on their résumé.

At this point, doubts about whether Indiana belongs on this stage have been put to bed. But even for someone like Cignetti, who has accomplished a lot in a short time at Indiana, there's still plenty to prove when a monster program like Ohio State comes to town.

"Winning does a lot of good things and I think that's what's happened," Cignetti said. "You've got an opponent coming in here that's used to winning, winning championships, and as strong a brand as there is in America for years and years and years. We're a team that's developing still and I'm sure they'd say the same about their team. It ought to be a great environment."