WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Indiana football finished another season with their heads hanging low and feelings of sorrow. The Hoosiers lost to Purdue to close out their 2023 season and finished the year 3-9 with just one conference win. There wasn't much to cheer about this season for Indiana as they observed the programs around them continue to grow. There's a lot of movement going on in college sports and while that's taking place, the Hoosiers are sitting back and watching everyone run past them. Changes need to be made, plain and simple. Indiana needs to start competing in the world of college football and those changes need to happen throughout the entire program.
The Hoosiers don't have much history to cheer for and this season is just another marker in what is the difficult history of Indiana football. This season saw a lot of dysfunction in the program and the unstable nature of the program was one of the many reasons the team could never get its solid footing. From the quarterback questions at the beginning of the year to the almost disastrous loss to Akron, and then the rough final three weeks of the season, Indiana had troubles week after week after week.
Tom Allen had tried to give his team hope for the final remaining weeks but the hope was already lost. Indiana had little to play for and without any heartbeat, there was no life.
“You think about three games that all came down to the last play,” Allen said. “Opportunity to win the game and finish it out. Proud of our guys for battling and fighting and competing to the bitter end but it's about us as coaches doing a better job of making a better call in those situations…It is very frustrating, disappointing, disappointing isn't even the right word just devastating.”
The sport of college football is changing every day, and it's clear Indiana has fallen behind. Football as a whole is the most important entity in the NCAA and yet Indiana as a whole fails to acknowledge the importance of having a suitable program. Indiana is in need of a lot of things, things that go deeper than just the players and coaches on the football field.
The Big Ten is going to expand next year adding new teams to the conference and the importance of being relevant only continues to grow. College football is only getting bigger and while the game continues to evolve, Indiana continues to sink to the bare bottom of the sport.
“There’s just a reality of how things have changed in the world that we are in now,” Allen said. “We have to do a great job of adapting to the new world that we're in cause it's totally different. It changed dramatically in the last couple of years so we gotta be able to be at the forefront of aggressively going after the reality of what it has become. It’s a different world now without question.”
The window of the Allen era might be ending but the problems go beyond that. It’s time for the university to take the program seriously. Indiana can’t afford to keep being at the bottom every year. It’s understandable to have difficult seasons here and there but it can't always be this bad. It isn't going to be an easy fix but there has to be some sort of effort. Every year this program is scraping for its life and if something does change soon, things can take a dangerous turn quickly. We've already seen it across the NCAA and it's the harsh reality of this new world.
Since the 2020 season, the program has faced its true about their current situation. There is little life behind the program and not much that giving it life moving forward. Nothing really gives confidence to those in and around the program of new life and people watching on the outside are tired. People can sit around and say that the program has hope but until that said hope turns into something even remotely positive, it's hard to be optimistic about anything with Indiana football.
These last three weeks have spiraled down to another level of misery. They've showed a new bottom during this era within Indiana football. Big changes are coming to the sport and they are here to stay. Hard conversations need to take place or else Indiana football is going to find itself in a very very bad spot. For the program as a whole, changes need to take place, from top to bottom.
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