@tammany sounds good, but the problem is, you usually have to schedule those games a couple years out. How do you know who will be top 15 then? I say stick with games that make sense from a rivalry perspective: Lville, UK, or even a UVA, Mizzou or Vandy. I'll bet at least one of those teams will be top 15 in the next couple of years.
@kkott It’s possible to schedule top-15 programs and estimate who will be good — and yes it’s not a given but you can put the odds in your favor. I’m just guessing what IU might do.
UK is going to play UL for their P4 non-con, not us.
And none of those other games are rivalries so I don’t really follow that.
@kkott We have Notre Dame on the schedule in a few years. Sounds like West Virginia might be available. We'll be "fine" when we feel like we need to react to all this. There will be a lot of moving parts. And there will be tons of teams willing to play home and homes with a solid B10 program.
@kkott Also... i thought Cig's response was a good one in showing why it was, in fact, a very good idea for IU to change up how they were scheduling OOC games. Every team has 12 regular season games. At the time those decisions were made, the bulk of the SEC had 3 teams on their schedule that were as weak, or weaker, than IU's 3 OOC opponents are slated to be. Their "top 9" games were similar to IU's top 9 games, especially when you factor in the SEC bias that goes in to the preseason polls, which has a lasting impact all season long.
Now that the SEC scheduling dynamic has changed, IU will react, I'm sure. There will be cross conference rivalry games that will impact finding an opponent, to be sure. Oklahoma will play Ok State... UK will play Louisville... as examples. But I'm sure there are enough B12, ACC, and even lower level SEC schools that would love to play a solid B10 program, it won't be an issue.
And again, we do have a Notre Dame home and home on the books in a few years.
@tammany If I'm IU, I push to break in to Texas a little bit. Baylor, Texas Tech, SMU, TCU... any of those would be great home and home opponents. Texas and Texas A&M will likely be looking for "bigger profile" OOC games than those with their likely 1 tough one...bigger than IU, but also bigger than their home state non SEC schools. I would think those schools would jump at the opportunity to play a solid B10 program like IU.
If not them, then maybe breaking in to Georgia or Florida? Georgia Tech, Central Florida, heck, maybe even FSU with where they're at, right now.
Kansas or Kansas State would be good. North Carolina or Duke would be good. I would assume UNC will be hunting for something a little more elite than IU, with Belichik there though.
Why exactly are we not going back to the playoff? We have a QB who is projected as high as number 1 in the entire draft, and multiple all Americans.@iunorth Didn't think it made sense to cancel those games before, and I still don't. Ironic if we now have to troll to find a P5 opponent. We're an outsider to the party that is upper level college football and we're not going to back into the playoffs. We need to have decent opponents on our schedule, or it will bite us in the rear more often than it helps us by avoiding them. Now I think it's a moot point anyway. Gonna have to add them back after paying to get them off our schedule. I wonder if UVA filled that date....
Because we are Indiana and they don't think we can repeat with 2 best years in school history in a row.