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BLOOMINGTON — Memorial Stadium will be roughly as full as possible Saturday night, when Indiana football and Illinois meet in the first major game on the Big Ten calendar.
The game has been sold out for months, with aftermarket prices pushing from $150 to $800-plus. IU’s media relations staff issued 457 credentials. The press box will be full. Per On3’s Steve Wiltfong, Indiana’s lengthy list of recruiting visitors is expected to include Jalen Brewster, the No. 1-ranked defensive lineman in 2027.
All of it reflects the gravity of what will be the first game between top-20 teams inside Indiana’s stadium since 1987. Should the Hoosiers win, it will be their first victory over a top-10 team in front of fans in more than half a century.
Which leaves us — as kickoff approaches — grappling with a basic yet important question: For which team is this game more important? The answer: The one gathered on the west sideline, wearing the uncomfortable black hat of favorite.
Saturday night has been billed in some corners as a College Football Playoff elimination game, and it might be.
Indiana got nothing of value from its nonconference, and every remaining quality win recognizable beyond Saturday will have to be gained on the road. The Hoosiers can’t afford to pass up what right now looks like their only chance at a ranked home win (Michigan State could change that) this season.
Illinois at least won at Duke in Week 2 but, given the Blue Devils backstopped that by getting roughed up at Tulane — they trailed 31-16 at the end of the third quarter — it’s not clear how well that victory will stand up. Bret Bielema’s team at least gets a crack at some quality wins at home, namely Southern Cal and Ohio State, but there isn’t much safe harbor left for the Illini if this win passes them by.
There is a picture wider than either team’s season, though. Perception can drive success and narrative as much as reality, and one side is fighting a lot harder against both heading into this weekend.
Since last season’s controversial — it shouldn’t have been, but ultimately it was — inclusion in the playoff, Indiana has remained in the national college football consciousness as an example of why the system needs reform. IU football had, according to well more than a few talking heads, defrauded its way into the field.
When the Hoosiers’ nonconference scheduling philosophy, which predated Curt Cignetti’s hiring, became a topic of national debate, it was framed as further proof Indiana should not be taken seriously. A house-of-cards program led by a fast-talking coach.
A lot, if not all, of that was and remains nonsense. IU made the playoff on its merits last season. And it has the tools to do the same this season. Not tools enough to look like a lock, but Cignetti still has more than enough talent at his disposal to make another run at what for the moment anyway remains a 12-team field.
Nothing shuts up critics like winning, though. Especially winning like this.
While Indiana spent the offseason defending its 2024 season, a sport prone to talking out of both sides of its mouth wondered who might be the Hoosiers of 2025.
Set aside for one moment the irony of simultaneously tearing Cinderella down while actively seeking out the next one. It was borderline disrespectful to hear Illinois — which won nine games in the regular season and beat South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl — thrown around as the next out-of-nowhere playoff contender.
The Illini earned the right last season to be taken seriously this season.
And, in fairness, when it’s mattered thus far they have been. Bielema’s team started the season in the top 15 and has since risen into the top 10 in both major national rankings. Win their next three (at IU, USC, at Purdue) and the Illini could very well set up a top-five home game with Ohio State on Oct. 11.
Indiana’s job is to kill that dream at the source Saturday night. In so doing, the Hoosiers would start winning the national argument again.
Here is where last season and this one diverge.
There have been, throughout college football history, teams that rode the wave of emotion and momentum that comes with such unexpected success. This is no longer that. Building success and sustaining success are two very different challenges.
Which is why in its own way a win would mean more for the Hoosiers. They’ve been a one-year wonder before, and learned the hard way that you only get taken seriously long term if you follow the first hit with a second one.
Put another way: Teams with the ambitions Indiana holds win games like this. They are difficult to beat at home. They capitalize on opportune moments for quality wins. They don’t let opportunity pass them by.
They win not when it seems like some distant turn of fate has decided it so, but when they take that fate in their own hands.
The national view is fascinating. IU opened a three-point favorite and his since picked up two to three points depending upon your preferred oddsmaker. On the other hand, the pundit class seems more convinced of Illinois’ chances. A six-person USA TODAY panel even went so far as to pick the Illini unanimously.
Cignetti and his team won’t have any problem with that. They’ve been doubted before. But eventually, all underdogs either turn into favorites, or they turn into pumpkins.
Indiana faces the chance to play the big dog this weekend in the Big Ten. It has to seize that chance.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana football vs Illinois: Odds, needs to win, College Football Playoff path
