The 2024 IU football season is going to be a tug-of-war between the historic futility of the program, and new head coach Curt Cignetti’s refusal to lose.
How will it end?
For a respected take we turn to the always highly anticipated Phil Steele’s College Football Preview Magazine.
The digital edition of Steele’s 2024 yearbook was released earlier this month, and in it he paints a relatively rosy outlook for Indiana.
Out of 18 teams, Steele ranks IU 12th in the Big Ten. That’s obviously not a ringing endorsement, but it is a signal of at least the start of an expected turnaround after the Hoosiers came in last of 14 teams a year ago. Steele says hit outlook is influenced by Cignetti’s track record of success — he’s never had a losing season as a head coach.
But what does 12th place in the 18-team Big Ten get you?
Bowl eligibility, according to Steele.
In the wake of the firing of Tom Allen, the Hoosiers lost 38 players to the transfer portal while also bringing 30 of their own for a national top-15 transfer class according to On3. Pair that with their returning core and Steele has IU earning a bowl berth in Cignetti’s first year in Bloomington this fall.
Steele said that eight of his nine iterations of power rankings has the Hoosiers bowl eligible.
The new scheduling format of the Big Ten is playing a role in a more promising outlook, as IU has escaped playing Penn State for the first time since the inception of the East and West divisions.
The Hoosiers still must face Michigan and Ohio State, but the remainder of Indiana’s league schedule features six of the nine teams in the bottom half of Steele’s projected league standings (Michigan State, Purdue, Northwestern, Maryland, Washington and UCLA).
Couple those six games with three very winnable nonconference games, and it’s easy to see why the Hoosiers have a chance to improve considerably this fall.
Overall, IU’s schedule ranked 51 spots easier than last season according to Steele.
And he slots IU in as his fourth most-improved team in all of college football.
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