IU football’s Isaiah Jones and Carter Smith are both from Ohio.
Jones’ father played tight end for Ohio State, and Smith grew up in Columbus. They were both immersed in Buckeye football.
For their fathers, the darkest day is known as when Indiana went into Ohio Stadium and beat Ohio State 31-10 in 1987.
But for Smith and Jones, their own low point at Indiana came decades later against another team from Ohio.
Surrounded by an elite OSU program throughout their young lives, they probably could not have imagined how low things could get in Bloomington. After all, Ohio State finished that 1987 season 6-4-1. So for them, dark was redefined during their own playing careers.
Smith has probably heard about the “darkest day” Ohio State game enough that the phrase slipped into his own lexicon when asked what his low point was as a Hoosier.
“Double overtime, Akron, probably,” Smith said Tuesday evening in Bloomington. “That was a dark day. Tend not to think about things like that anymore. Full steam ahead.”
Smith, Jones and about 10 other 2026 Hoosiers are holdovers from the Tom Allen era. They went from an IU program that posted a 9-27 record from 2021 to 2023, to a 27-2 mark over the last two seasons.
Interestingly enough, the Akron game was one of those nine wins in the three years that preceded the arrival of Curt Cignetti at IU. But the Hoosiers were a missed Akron 32-yard field goal at the end of regulation from losing to the MAC program.
Jones pointed to the 2023 win over the Zips as his low point as well.
“I just remember the four overtime Akron game,” Jones. “There was a group of about 20 guys able to walk end zone to end zone to watch the two point plays. That’s probably my reference point.”
Smith is furthering along in blocking out the Akron memory. As Jones says, it was four overtimes, not two as IU won 29-27 in a game that didn’t end until almost midnight.
And some would say things got worse after the game.
Torn between his tradition after winning games and the disappointing effort against Akron, Allen had his team sing the IU fight song, and that “celebration” was posted to social media.
Truth be told, there was very little celebrating that night. It was part of a series of moments that sealed Allen’s fate as head coach — and ultimately ushered in the greatest turnaround in college sports history.
Now three years removed from the Akron game, Jones says most of his current teammates only know the new Indiana.
“With the transfers and the young guys coming in now, this is probably the only Indiana they’ve known,” Jones said. “I don’t know if they really paid attention to Indiana two years ago, so I don’t even know if any of them know about the whole (Allen) era and the previous staff. No, probably not. I think they only know the Curt Cignetti era now.”
Even after the regrettable decision to let his team celebrate, Allen knew his team’s performance was disastrous.
“It’s very frustrating. It’s not good enough,” he said after the game.
It was one of Cignetti’s future stars, Louis Moore, who saved the day with a pick-six interception, while the very quarterback IU will face this Saturday, Tayven Jackson, struggled, completing just 11-of-26 throws with an interception.
A night game with Indiana wearing black uniforms made the game ever darker. And it’s a moment Smith would rather forget.
“It makes me feel like I’ve been embedded in this culture,” Smith said. “I want to lead as much as I can and show by example that that’s not a place that we want to be at anymore.”
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