A year ago ESPN college football analysts were fully bought in on an IU football narrative: The 2024 team was a fluke that had risen to prominence because it had played a soft schedule.
Of course they were all wildly inaccurate in that assessment.
Now there seems to be another consensus when it comes to Curt Cignetti’s third Indiana team: It is too hard to repeat as national champion.
A panel of 12 at ESPN made their 2026 national champion predictions — and none chose the Hoosiers to repeat.
Instead, five are going with Notre Dame, three with Ohio State, and two each with Oregon and Texas.
This follows as a pattern of journalists generally not buying into an Indiana repeat.
AP top-5 pollsters voted Indiana as the No. 6 team in their preseason college football rankings. That’s an ominous outlook, as each of the last four reigning national champions that debuted outside the top five of the following preseason’s poll went on to finish unranked.
And full disclosure, only three teams have repeated in the last 30 years. So as an abstract concept, it is indeed unlikely to happen.
Perhaps they’re on to something, or perhaps it’s just the latest indication of the Brand Brain epidemic that pervades the media when it comes to Indiana. Call your doctor or pharmacist.
After all, with everyone convinced 2024 Indiana was a fluke, the Hoosiers were No. 20 in the 2025 preseason AP top-25 poll — before running the table at 16-0.
Now to be fair to the ESPN panel, none of them are predicting Indiana will fall off a cliff.
All 12 have the Hoosiers returning to the CFP, but only one (Kyle Bonagura at the No. 4 seed) has them getting a first round bye. The rest have IU in the No. 5 to No. 8 seed range — which are the spots that host a first round playoff game.
None of the 12 appear to be picking a Big Ten title repeat by IU either. All 12 have at least one and in some cases two Big Ten teams (Ohio State, Oregon) ahead of the Hoosiers in their CFP seed projections.
All 12 of the ESPN analysts should know the signature catchphrase of network pioneer Chris Berman.
“But that’s why they play the games,” he likes to say.
And play the games they will, beginning Saturday when Indiana hosts North Texas at Noon ET in Bloomington.
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