Indiana hasn’t won the war, but the battle it lost against Ohio State last month wasn’t a knockout blow as it relates to the Big Ten Championship game.
Despite losing in agonizing fashion to the Buckeyes, IU now stands alone in second place in the Big Ten standings following consecutive losses by OSU. That means the Hoosiers now control their own destiny to play in the conference title game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Dec. 5.
IU won the 2025 Big Ten Championship game against Ohio State, 13-10. It was the program’s first outright league crown since 1945.
Both Indiana and Ohio State’s quarterbacks were injured in their defensive slugfest on Oct. 17, and they’ve both struggled offensively since. OSU signal-caller Julian Sayin is out indefinitely, while IU’s Josh Hoover has tried to play through an undisclosed injury.
The teams are headed in different directions at the moment.
Following a 41-28 loss at home to Oregon on Saturday, Ohio State is now 4-2 in the Big Ten, a game behind Indiana (5-1). Everyone trails 6-0 UCLA at the moment.
The Buckeyes also lost last weekend to Indiana’s next opponent, USC.
Meanwhile, the Hoosiers have won consecutive low-scoring overtime games against Michigan and Minnesota since losing to the Buckeyes. IU has this weekend off.
If Indiana suffers a second Big Ten loss it’ll fall into a group of several two loss teams. There were seven as of Saturday evening after Ohio State lost. That will invoke the following Big Ten tiebreaker rules:
1. The tied teams will be compared based on head-to-head matchups during the regular season.
2. The tied teams will be compared based on record against all common conference opponents.
3. The tied teams will be compared based on record against common opponents with the best conference record and proceeding through the common conference opponents based on their order of finish within the conference standings.
4. The tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents.
5. The representative will be chosen based on the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.
6. The representative will be chosen by random draw among the tied teams conducted by the commissioner or designee.
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