This is IU football.
There is no more total, perfect way to sum up the collapse of a 25-point homecoming lead than that.
This is what IU football is. This is what IU football does. This is the reality, however difficult to accept.
The historic 4-0 start, No. 1 Ohio State on the ropes, a career-best 464-yard passing day for senior quarterback Nate Sudfeld — these are all things IU football had.
And in the fourth quarter of a 55-52 loss to Rutgers, we watched them give it all away.
It wasn’t the Scarlet Knights (3-3, 1-2) that beat the Hoosiers (4-3, 0-3). It was hubris.
The Hoosiers got caught smiling, and it cost them: cushion, belief, respect. Whatever the Hoosiers earned this season, they lost it.
And nobody seems phased.
This loss compromises everything IU has worked so hard for, yet no one — not even IU Coach Kevin Wilson — showed any emotion in the shadow of what was the most embarrassing loss, I would wager, in program history.
There was no emotion, no fire, only detached acceptance — and that, more than any X or O, is what IU needs to change.
The Hoosiers have become too comfortable accepting defeat, and for a losing program, that is the most difficult demon to shake off.
This is not what IU football has to be, but until it actively, wholly commits to being anything else, it is what it will stay.
It’s not something I relish saying, but it’s difficult to see it any other way.
Talent certainly isn’t the problem. Six Hoosiers had more than 100 all-purpose yards Saturday. The offense scored a season-high 52 points and the most points in a third quarter since 2001.
The defense, too, we’ve seen is capable of so much more. The unit has posted seven scoreless quarters this season and forced 12 takeaways.
But time and time again, IU has demonstrated an inability to stay focused when it has the lead.
Southern Illinois, Florida International, Western Kentucky, Wake Forest. The Hoosiers led in the third quarter against all of these opponents, each of whom battled back and nearly succeeded in exploiting the weakness that Rutgers blew open.
The Hoosiers’ lack of discipline wasted their talent homecoming Saturday, and it’s a damn shame.
Now, IU must scrape together its mojo in the thick of the Big Ten schedule, facing opponents with a combined record of 19-2 in the next three weeks.
Somewhere, somehow, the Hoosiers will need to discover their emotional drive and pull off an upset, or else face two must-win games in order to remedy bowl eligibility.
And just for a moment in his postgame interview, Sudfeld broke his composure and showed us a sliver of emotion.
“It’s new,” he said, a barely audible whisper. “It hurts.”
This is IU football.
But it doesn’t have to be.
vziege@indiana.edu
