It should come as no surprise that there isn’t much movement in this week’s power ratings — certainly not as much as there was last week. That’s what happens when Ohio State, Penn State, Alabama and Georgia — four of our top five teams last week — all take the week off. Toss in the fact that teams like Oregon, Texas, LSU and Tennessee all played Group of Five or FCS squads, and it’s hard to move anybody around too much.
However, there is one team that has crashed the party for the first time this season. Indiana, which was No. 16 in our ratings last week, crushed Illinois — which was 22nd in our ratings compared to No. 9 in the AP Top 25 — by 53 points. Even after taking out a lot of the garbage time numbers, the performance was still enough to vault the Hoosiers into the top 10.
They were a fun Cinderella story last year, but as I wrote in my CFP Vibe Check piece Sunday, that’s no longer the case. Indiana is no longer just a good story; it’s a legitimately good team, led by a quarterback who could be the first player at his position taken in the draft if he continues playing the way he has been.
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The discussion about last year’s Hoosiers team was that it took advantage of a favorable schedule, but it wasn’t on the same level as the elite. I felt the same, but this year’s team is different, and the narrative surrounding it needs to shift as well. While the Hoosiers may yet be elite, this team is better than last year’s, and the gap between it and the teams at the top is smaller. Granted, none of that will matter until the Hoosiers start beating those teams, but even if pollsters overrated Illinois heading into Saturday, it was a well-above-average team and got its ass handed to it by the Hoosiers.
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