Four reasons Indiana is the 12-team College Football Playoff’s most fascinating contender

College Football Playoff expansion was made for teams such as Indiana.

Coach Curt “Google me” Cignetti and the Hoosiers are having one of the great seasons in program history. Indiana football dates back to the 1880s, and this is the first time it has been 9-0. The Hoosiers have never won as many as 10 games in a season, a mark they could reach Saturday against Michigan. Indiana, which has beaten the Wolverines just 10 times in 72 meetings, is favored by 14 1/2 points over the defending national champions, per BetMGM. That is a stunning sentence.

Indiana’s rise from 3-9 to relentless bulldozer flattening everything in its path under a first-year coach is one of the stories of the season. That it coincides with a new playoff format meant to reward more teams is perfect timing. Instead of being shipped out to a bowl game to potentially face an opponent with a big chunk of its starting lineup opting out, the ultimate Cinderella team will get to play for the national title.

Maybe.

Indiana landed at No. 8 in the selection committee’s first rankings Tuesday night, the first CFP Top 25 in the new 12-team format, slotting in as the No. 9 seed, across from No. 8 seed Tennessee (ranked No. 7 overall) in the first round.

The Hoosiers’ at-large worthiness has the potential to be the most fascinating case study in Year 1 of this new system, a Rorschach test for the committee and fans. What do you see in the Hoosiers: a good team beating up punching bags, or one that can go toe-to-toe with the best in the country?

Just to be clear, we’re not assuming anything.

We would not dare suggest Cignetti, quarterback Kurtis Rourke, pass-rush terror Mikail Kamara and company are incapable of completing an undefeated regular season — that would include a victory against No. 3 Ohio State — and rolling into the Big Ten title game with a spot in the CFP secure, merely playing for seeding.

Austin Mock’s model has Indiana’s chances to make the Playoff at 85 percent even though its chances of winning the Big Ten are only 10 percent. Why? Indiana could very well lose at Ohio State on Nov. 23. At 11-1 with a loss to the Buckeyes — for the sake of this exercise, let’s make the result of the game something less than a nail biter but not quite an Ohio State blowout — Indiana would likely be shut out of the Big Ten championship game.

It’s easy to say an 11-1 Big Ten team is a lock. And, trust us, everybody at the conference office in Rosemont, Ill., will be making that case. But Indiana could be a test case for several CFP selection theories.

How much does the committee value strength of schedule?

It would be hard to argue that any serious contender for an at-large CFP bid has played a weaker schedule to this point than Indiana. None of the myriad strength-of-schedule metrics view the Hoosiers’ slate thus far favorably. ESPN’s FPI has Indiana’s SOS ranked 103rd out of 134 Football Bowl Subdivision teams. The only other Power 4 team ranked outside the top 90 is Utah at 100. Mock ranks Indiana’s past strength of schedule 82nd and its remaining strength of schedule 22nd.

Recent improvement by Washington and UCLA should help the Hoosiers. Nebraska’s slide doesn’t. The Hoosiers’ nonconference schedule was especially weak (FIU, Western Illinois and Charlotte), and they won’t get as much of a bump from this weekend’s game against Michigan (5-4) as they probably expected a month ago. But, of course, Ohio State will give Indiana a big boost. It doesn’t seem fair that the Hoosiers’ season could come down how it plays in Columbus, but if they are going to get thrown into a pile with a group of at-large contenders that includes a handful of 10-2 SEC teams — like, say, Alabama — simply having one fewer loss might not be a deciding factor.

Skeptical of the computers? How about this from Fox’s Chris Fallica, who pointed out that Indiana could finish 11-1 with zero wins over teams receiving a single point in the AP Top 25.

It’s not just who you play, it’s how you play

Indiana is a wagon. The committee does not actually use a metric titled Game Control, but the Hoosiers would be kings of it.

“The way that they have played in those games, and the dominance that they have shown in those games … has been really impressive to the committee,” said selection committee chairman Warde Manuel, who is Michigan’s athletic director. “And so we couldn’t ignore that as it related to where they were ranked and how we saw them, even though strength of schedule is important, we also have watched those games.”

Indiana leads the country in scoring margin against FBS opponents at 27.8 points per game. Last week against Michigan State, they fell behind for the first time all season, then scored 47 straight points to win 47-10.

The committee doesn’t emphasize margin of victory so as not to encourage running up the score. It’s a silly nod to sportsmanship because true running-it-up is so rare. Dominance shows up in other ways, though, and you can’t miss it with the Hoosiers. The same metrics that don’t love Indiana’s schedule and adjust for the quality of opponents still appreciate what’s going on with the Hoosiers. Indiana is 10th in FPI, just behind unbeaten Miami and just ahead of Penn State.

Indiana is beating bad and mediocre opponents the way an elite team would.

The power of the Big Ten

Let’s call it what it is: The Big Ten and SEC have sent a message to the selection committee: We’re better than these other leagues and should be treated as such.

Will the committee concede that point? What if there is a “bid-stealer” situation in the ACC or Big 12? For example, what if Miami loses the ACC championship game and is sitting at 12-1 in the at-large pool? How about Indiana being judged against 12-1 BYU under similar circumstances?

The eye test and the power of the logo

Often when we talk about the eye test, what we mean is, how do you recruit? That’s where getting into comparisons with SEC teams becomes especially tough for Indiana. Alabama, Tennessee, LSU, Texas A&M and Ole Miss all look really good coming off the bus, and we know they have rosters that can compete at a high level — even if their resumes lack pop. Looking at you, Tennessee.

How much does brand value creep into the process? Put Alabama on one side and Indiana on the other, and ask somebody who is better. What about a head-to-head of 11-1 Notre Dame and 11-1 Indiana?

Of course, there might be plenty of room for all those teams, depending on how things break around the country.

Welcome to the College Football Playoff race, Hoosiers. Your inclusion has made the next month a lot more interesting.

(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)