BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Michigan football is a case study in why it’s so important to have stability at the quarterback position.

The Wolverines are currently enduring a 5-4 season and have lost three of their last four games. A major reason for the Wolverines’ woes are a revolving door at the quarterback spot.

Davis Warren, Alex Orji and (departed) Jack Tuttle have all received playing time and the results have been mediocre for the Wolverines. They’ve combined for 1,209 yards, 10 touchdowns and 9 interceptions.

Their struggles have a cascading effect on the rest of the offense. While Kalel Mullings (710 yards, 5.4 per carry) and Donovan Edwards (467 yards, 4.7 per carry) haven’t had bad seasons, they would be more effective with a better passing game.

It’s no accident that Michigan was 40-3 from 2021-23 because it had stability at the quarterback spot. Cade McNamara (now at Iowa) and J.J. McCarthy held down the role and both of them thrived.

Warren is likely to get the start today against Indiana. For Michigan to be competitive, it needs to get stability from the quarterback position. With Indiana’s defense putting good pressure on enemy quarterbacks? This won’t be an easy task.

*** LIVE BLOG: And once the game starts, follow all the action on our live blog written by Todd Golden. To check that out, CLICK HERE.

How to watch Indiana vs. Michigan

• Who: Indiana Hoosiers (9-0, 6-0) vs. Michigan Wolverines (5-4, 3-3)

• What: Indiana, ranked No. 8 in the College Football Playoff rankings will be trying to maintain their unbeaten record and their spot in the CFP. Michigan will train to attain bowl eligibility with a victory.

• When: 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, Nov. 9.

• Where: Memorial Stadium, Bloomington, Ind.

• TV: CBS.                             

• Announcers: Brad Nessler (play-by-play), Gary Danielson (analyst), Jenny Dell (sideline).

• Radio: Indiana Hoosiers Sports Network, Sirius XM (channel 119 or 195)

• Radio Announcers: Don Fischer (play-by-play), Buck Suhr (analyst), John Herrick

• Point spread: Indiana is a 14.5-point favorite and the over/under is 53.5 points, according to the FanDuel Sportsbook.

• Recent results: Indiana defeated Michigan State 47-10 and Michigan lost 38-17 to No. 1 Oregon last week.

• Series history: Michigan leads 62-10. Indiana last won in the series in 2020. It’s the only win for the Hoosiers in the series since 1987.

• Quarterback matchup: After a one-game absence due to a thumb injury, Kurtis Rourke returned to the starting role for the Hoosiers and thrived against Michigan State. He completed 19 of 29 passes for 263 yards and 4 touchdown passes. For the season, Rourke has completed 73.3% of his passes for 2,204 yards, 19 touchdowns and just 3 interceptions.

Michigan has had a revolving door at its quarterback spot, with three different signal-callers seeing action, including former Indiana player Jack Tuttle, who has since left the Wolverines. Alex Orji and Davis Warren have also made starts this season.

Warren was back in the starting role in Michigan’s loss to Oregon last week and will likely start against Indiana. The senior completed 13 of 23 passes for 165 yards and 2 touchdowns against the Ducks.

• Weather: According to weather.com, it’s going to be 62 degrees and cloudy with a 2% chance of rain and an east-southeast wind at 8 miles per hour at 3 p.m. in Bloomington.

Meet the Coaches

• Sherrone Moore, Michigan: Moore is in his first year at Michigan and he has a 5-4 record. This is the first head coaching job for Moore, who played two seasons as an offensive lineman at Oklahoma. Before he was named head coach, he was on Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan staff as offensive line and offensive coordinator from 2021-23. Moore was co-offensive coordinator from 2021-22. From 2018-20, Moore was Michigan’s tight ends coach. Before he came to Michigan, Moore spent time at Central Michigan as tight ends coach (2014-17) and as assistant head coach (2017). The rest of Moore’s coaching career was spent at Louisville (2009-13) where he started as a graduate assistant and later became the tight ends coach.

• Curt Cignetti, Indiana: Cignetti, 9-0 at Indiana, enters his first season at Indiana after a five-year run at James Madison with a 52-9 overall record. During his first three seasons at James Madison, the Dukes reached the FCS national championship once and the semifinals twice. After moving up to the FBS, they went 19-4 under Cignetti. Prior to JMU, he had a 14-9 record in two seasons at Elon and a 53-17 record in six seasons at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Before becoming a head coach, he was the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Alabama under Nick Saban from 2007-10 and held various assistant coaching positions at NC State from 2000-06. Other previous stops include Pittsburgh, Temple, Rice and Davidson. Cignetti played quarterback at West Virginia from 1979-82. His father, Frank, is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

New federal data shows that the majority of the country’s public K–12 schools had difficulty hiring fully-certified teachers heading into the current academic year — and Indiana districts are not immune to vacancies.

Officials at nearly 75% of public schools nationwide said they had trouble filling one or more vacant teaching positions before kicking off the 2024-25 school year, according to a survey study released by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

The School Pulse Panel data published by NCES showed one-fifth of vacant teacher positions remained unfilled at the start of this school year — with many ongoing vacancies. As of Thursday, the Indiana Department of Education’s job board listed more than 1,300 available educator jobs statewide.

That’s an improvement from earlier this year. As of June, there were more than 2,200 vacancies for teaching positions statewide and nearly 1,000 openings for other jobs within school districts.

It’s a hopeful drop, too, compared to in 2022, when — not long after the COVID-19 pandemic — IDOE’s job board listed 4,200 open jobs within Indiana schools. More than 2,500 of the open positions posted were teaching jobs.

But many openings remain. Most of the unfilled positions in Indiana are for elementary, early childhood and special education positions. 

The NCES data, collected in August, came from 1,392 participating public K–12 schools from every state and the District of Columbia. NCES did not release state-by-state numbers, however, instead releasing only aggregate country-wide results.

Areas with the most vacancies

On average, public schools reported having six open teacher positions before the start of the current academic year. By the first day of school, 79% of those positions were filled, according to NCES. 

National survey results indicated that general elementary teaching positions, special education and English language arts positions were among the most commonly cited by public schools as having at least one teaching position to fill prior to the start of this school year. Special education remained the most difficult teaching position to hire for this year.

In the Hoosier state, 1,370 teaching positions were listed on IDOE’s jobs board as of Thursday. More than 2,600 school openings were available, overall.

A breakdown of specific teaching vacancies included:

• 15 in alternative education
• 23 in arts
• 25 in career and technical education
• 332 in early childhood
• 234 in elementary education
• 36 in ENL/ESL
• 33 in foreign language
• 58 in language arts
• 8 in library
• 77 in mathematics
• 25 in music
• 25 in physical education
• 77 in science
• 39 in social studies
• 286 in special education – 286
• 369 in other teaching positions

Why vacancies persist 

Compared to the national estimate, public schools with a student body made up of less than 25% students of color reported filling a higher percentage of vacancies with fully certified teachers, per the NCES survey.

Schools with a student body made up of more than 75% students of color, as well as those in high-poverty neighborhoods, reported more vacancies.

Teacher shortages — especially in certain subject areas, like English-as-a-second-language classes and special education — have been particularly challenging for schools since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the NCES report. 

Teaching salaries have also largely failed to keep up with inflation, and teachers’ morale declined following the pandemic. National experts cited increased issues with student behavior and a rise in mental health problems as contributing factors, too.

Still, the NCES survey results also noted that 64% of schools said “an overall lack of qualified candidates” and “too few candidates” applying for open positions were the top challenges in finding teachers to fill vacancies.

Compared to years past, though, the percentage of schools saying candidates felt like salary and benefits were not enough dropped for both teaching and non-teaching staff.

Indiana’s latest teacher compensation report revealed that Hoosier teachers’ average annual pay exceeded $60,000 for the 2023-24 academic year — a new high for pay. 

The average teacher salary in Indiana during the last school year was recorded at $60,557 — up from $58,531 the year prior — and nearly all Hoosier school districts gave teachers a raise. But many teachers in the state — especially those with little to no experience — still make less.

IDOE has targeted teacher recruitment with multiple grants and other programming to increase the number of Indiana teachers and cut down on lingering vacancies, including the I-SEAL program — run by the University of Indianapolis’ Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning — that allows current teachers, including those on emergency permits, to get fully licensed in special education at no cost.

More than 1,100 teachers have enrolled in the program, and nearly 600 have completed it since its inception in 2021.

Nearly 3,600 new-to-teaching hires were also brought into schools during 2023-24, according to the most recent state data.

Separately, 4,464 full-time teachers who already had classroom experience were hired by districts across the state.

Indiana numbers further showed 55,971 teachers were retained in 2023-24 from the previous year. That’s compared to 55,227, the year before. There were 55,682 teachers who stayed in classrooms in 2021-22, and 56,999 in 2020-21.

Additionally, an education plan released by Republican governor-elect Mike Braun called for raises to Hoosier teachers’ base salaries, and “guaranteed” professional benefits like new parent leave, as well as improved health insurance options.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — According to a new forecast by the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, the Indiana economy is on a sustainable path to growth.

Experts put together an economic outlook for 2025 that said 2024 had stronger than expected output, and considering the stronger output and improvements in inflation, Indiana is on track to “return to equilibrium” in 2025.

Phil Powell, an IU Kelley School of Business economist, contributed to the report.

“We are forecasting a pretty strong economy in 2025 for the nation,” Powell said. “And our state is going to perform better than the rest of the country.”

Powell says Indiana is projected to do well thanks to new business sector growth.

“So, with interest rates coming down, this is helping manufacturing in Indiana, and that’s going to disproportionately drive our growth relative to the rest of the nation,” Powell said.

Powell said his research has not shown a correlation between what political party is in the White House and economic growth.

“When you look at the history of economic performance in the United States, there is really no statistically significant difference in who is in office,” Powell said. “So, when we build our economic forecasting models, it’s independent of who is going to win and lose an election.”

The lower cost of living fueling consumer purchases also helps Indiana’s economic growth.

Brian Vander Schee, an IU Kelley School of Business marketing professor, contributed to the report.

“We’ve seen that there have been personal savings or an accumulation of wealth kinda saved up as a post-Covid period, but people continue spending as consumers, which helps the economy continue to grow, and we project that will continue into the new year,” Vander Schee said.

The Kelley School of Business will publish a detailed report of its 2025 economic outlook in December.
You can find that infomration in the Indiana Business Review.

For now, you can find more information about the report here.