What does the No. 1 College Football Playoff ranking mean for Indiana?

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The first College Football Playoff rankings for the 2024 season put Indiana in an interesting position as it tries to chart a course for the College Football Playoff.

Indiana is ranked No. 8 in the 12-team field, but the Hoosiers are actually No. 9 because of how the field is seeded. BYU, the No. 9 ranked team, is the top Big 12 team, so the Cougars picked over the Hoosiers and four other schools to get a bye as one of the conference champions.

There are countless twists and turns you can come up with trying to figure out Indiana’s fate. What if there were upsets in all three of the other conference championship games likely to set byes? The dreaded “bid theft” scenario? What if X-contender loses these two matches but Y-contender wins?

You can go crazy trying to map out different paths that will take the Hoosiers into or out of the College Football Playoff based on what’s happening elsewhere.

So let’s just stick to the ones that directly involve Hoosiers. That’s a lot to think about in itself.

If Indiana wins all of its remaining games

• The scenario here is simple: Indiana would make the College Football Playoff and get a bye, and it would be a top-four seed as the Big Ten champion.

This scenario would assume a 3-0 finish to the regular season and a win over Oregon in the Big Ten championship. In beating Oregon, Indiana could be the top seed in the College Football Playoff as an undefeated team that beat the No. 1 team in the Big Ten championship game.

If Indiana goes 3-0 in the regular season, but loses the Big Ten title game

• It would be difficult to keep a 12-1 Indiana team off the field. In this scenario, the Hoosiers would have a quality win on the road at Ohio State on Nov. 23 that would quell concerns about Indiana’s strength of schedule.

Most likely, depending on whether there were “bid stealers” in any of the other conference championship games, Indiana would be in, probably still hosting a first-round game, seeded between fifth and eighth, as the loss to Oregon would not be considered a detriment such. But the Hoosiers would relinquish some control over their destiny.

If Indiana loses at Ohio State and doesn’t make the Big Ten title game

• This is a possibility, but not one that would necessarily be fatal to the Hoosiers’ CFP hopes unless they were so decisively defeated by the Buckeyes that their rankings take a big hit.

If Indiana were to lose to the Buckeyes, and there are no surprises elsewhere in league play, they would find themselves in a three-way tie with Ohio State and Penn State for second place.

In that case, Ohio State would face Oregon in Big Ten play, as the Buckeyes will have beaten both the Hoosiers and Nittany Lions.

It’s not a terrible scenario for the Hoosiers — with one big caveat. In this case, Indiana would have a loss and would not be at risk of losing again in the Big Ten Championship. The Hoosiers would be vulnerable to scoring moves elsewhere, but they couldn’t do any further damage themselves. The Hoosiers can move up if the contenders ahead of them lose.

However, Indiana would need to be ranked high enough after the loss to Ohio State to set the above scenario in motion. If the Hoosiers are ranked No. 11-12, they would be vulnerable to being missed.

If Indiana loses at Ohio State, but still makes the Big Ti title game

• If Indiana loses at Ohio State, the Hoosiers would need a lot of help to get to the Big Ten championship.

A path back to the Big Ten championship game can be laid out, but it’s a circuitous path filled with unlikely circumstances.

Ohio State would have to lose one of the following games: Purdue at home, at Northwestern or Michigan at home. The Big Game is always full of upset opportunities, but it’s a favorable path for the Buckeyes.

In this scenario, Penn State would be in a tiebreaker with the Hoosiers. The Hoosiers and Nittany Lions do not play head-to-head and they would share the same loss against a common opponent (Ohio State), but Penn State’s stronger Big Ten schedule (next tiebreaker) would give the Nittany Lions the edge over the Hoosiers in a head-to -head tiebreaker.

So Indiana would need Penn State to lose another game as well. Penn State hosts Washington, plays at Purdue in Minnesota and finishes with a home game against Maryland. The Golden Gophers game is where Penn State would be most vulnerable — Minnesota has won four in a row — but Penn State would still be favored.

Oregon could also give the Hoosiers a path by losing two games, though that’s unlikely. The Ducks host Maryland, play at Wisconsin and finish at home against Washington.

Still with us?

If all of this somehow happened and the Hoosiers played in Indianapolis on Dec. 7, that would give Indiana a chance to clinch the Big Ten’s automatic berth. But it would also come with the risk of a second loss and perhaps playoff elimination, if the Hoosiers lost the championship game.

A two-loss Indiana team, even with those losses to Ohio State and likely Oregon, would be dangling by a thread as a CFP playoff qualifier. Both losses, in this scenario, have to be close for the Hoosiers to give the committee something to go by and to keep Indiana ranked high enough to make it a two-loss team.

If the committee goes the other way and punishes the Hoosiers, the rest of Indiana’s resume likely wouldn’t be strong enough to keep the Hoosiers in the top 12 of the rankings unless there was chaos elsewhere among the CFP contenders. Indiana would need the right kind of chaos to make the cut.

If Indiana loses to Michigan, but beats Ohio State

• Michigan comes to Bloomington on Saturday for a 7 p.m. kickoff. 15.30. Indiana is three games ahead of the Wolverines in the Big Ten standings. A loss to the Wolverines would likely drop Indiana to the bottom of the playoff qualifying pack or out of the CFP Top 12 for a week, but a road win at Ohio State could lift the Hoosiers back a week later. Timing is everything.

It would also set in motion all of the above scenarios to make the Big Ten championship game, but oddly enough, Indiana would be much better positioned to make it to Indy. Why? In this scenario, Indiana would have the tiebreaker advantage over the Buckeyes (head-to-head win) and Nittany Lions (head-to-head win against a common opponent).

So losing to a worse Michigan team might be better than losing to a much better Ohio State team for the Hoosiers in terms of making the Big Ten championship. It’s a strange new world.

If that happened, it could be a poisoned chalice for the Hoosiers if they lost in the championship game. A loss at Michigan could leave Indiana vulnerable compared to the losses of other CFP contenders. At best, it would likely end any chance of Indiana hosting a playoff game. At worst, it could eliminate the Hoosiers from CFP contention entirely.

If Indiana loses to Ohio State and to either Michigan or Purdue

• Indiana’s CFP hopes would almost certainly be over. Alabama is in the current two-loss field, but both of the Crimson Tide’s losses came against other playoff teams. This would not be the case for the Hoosiers.

While the hue and cry would be deafening, a three-loss Alabama team with all three losses against playoff qualifiers would likely carry more weight than Indiana’s two-loss resume with one home loss against a non-playoff contender. This is where Indiana’s Power Four-worst 103rd-ranked strength of schedule would come back to haunt them.

Certainly, a loss at the hands of struggling Purdue in the regular season finale at Memorial Stadium would be a fatal blow to Indiana’s CFP hopes. Indiana would then go bowling instead.

The bottom line? A win over Ohio State would most likely put Indiana on the path to a CFP playoff berth, as it would be one of the best wins any playoff contender would have.