Todd’s Take: Indiana Got What It Wanted With Easy Win, But These Games Are Bad For Fans

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – On Wednesday, I wrote about why Indiana plays games against FCS competition and why it’s beneficial to the bottom line for the FCS schools.

For Indiana? It’s the path of least resistance to reach bowl eligibility to play a FCS team. Not every FCS team is created equally, but you don’t schedule this game to lose it when it’s agreed to. In the case of Western Illinois, a team that had lost 25 games in a row going into Friday’s game? The path of least resistance is akin to a six-lane interstate.

For the Hoosiers, it’s a chance to play a lot of players without much worry about that pesky competitive part of the game getting in the way.

For Western Illinois? Yes, it’s a chance to test yourself against a team far better than what you’ll see in the Ohio Valley-Big South Conference. But the biggest thing for Western Illinois is the $450,000 check they take with them back to Macomb, Ill.

Those are the practical reasons for these games from the point of view of the teams, a transactional exercise that also fills a Big Ten Network window.

So what do the fans get out of it? For Indiana fans, they got the satisfaction of a dominant victory. And they don’t come any easier than the 77-3 rout the Hoosiers administered to the Leathernecks on Friday.

And that’s about it. Entertainment value? Minimal once you realize how poor the opponent is and how easy it was to pile those points up. Stakes? Almost non-existent.

Let’s be honest. These games stink. You know it when you see it on the schedule years in advance. You know it when game-week approaches and you get to know the tale of the tape. You know it when you walk towards the stadium, pondering in your mind how early the competitive phase of the game will cease.

This one was much worse than most. You can say, without hyperbole, that Western Illinois was the worst opponent Indiana has ever faced. The 77 points scored are an Indiana school record, breaking the 76-point record that had stood since 1901. The Hoosiers just missed their all-time victory margin (also 76) and set their all-time record for total yardage at 701.

It’s great that Indiana took care of business in the dominant manner it did, you’d worry if it didn’t, but it’s empty calories in the long view. The Hoosiers won’t see a team this bad for the rest of the season and maybe ever.

Meanwhile, the fans get the short end of the stick. There’s very little in it for them to sustain interest, much less justify the cost for the ticket.

The game was over before the first quarter ended with Indiana ahead 28-0. At one point, Indiana had a 21-0 edge in first downs. They did have a 415-to-98 edge in total offense at halftime. Indiana set an all-time total offense record at 701, so I suppose Indiana fans who were there can say they witnessed it, but what satisfaction comes from it when the opponent is so weak?

(I don’t want to go down an asterisk wormhole, but the previous record was 692 set against Purdue in 2013. That’s against a peer school. It’s almost as if the record book should differentiate between Big Ten games and nonconference games.)

All of the above is what made Curt Cignetti’s comments on the crowd a tad ill-timed last week. To be fair to Cignetti, when he made the remark about fans leaving early, he wasn’t doing it (necessarily) to drum up a sellout for Western Illinois. It was purely an honest reaction in the moment.

Playing Western Illinois also isn’t Cignetti’s fault. He didn’t schedule the game. He spoke to that after the game.

“The schedule is what it is. We’ll enjoy this one and think about the next one tomorrow or Sunday,” Cignetti said.

However, since the Western Illinois contest was next after he said something about the crowd? Naturally, it was going to be viewed as a bit of an acid test, especially after Cignetti addressed the topic again on his radio show.

Games between FCS and FBS games should never be viewed as any kind of acid test for anything. Indiana gets its win for bowl eligibility and Western Illinois gets its guarantee. That’s all that came of it.

Based on what Cignetti said about the fans, I can imagine some argued in their own heads whether they should heed his plea from the previous game and stick it out to the end?

I can also imagine, and could see with my own eyes, that it wasn’t a very long internal debate. Indiana fans did what almost any other fanbase would do – they found something more interesting to occupy their time. For the second straight week, fans bolted for the exits at halftime.

I can’t blame them one bit. What little skin was in this game to begin with had long dissipated.

At some point, a game can’t just be a game for the sake of it. Fan support can’t just exist in a vacuum. There has to be something at stake, something to hold interest. Why should fans of any school stick around just for the sake of doing it? Whatever passion the game could have produced was exhausted in the first quarter.

As Cignetti has said, college football is entertainment. The entertainment phase of this game was over long before the sun set on Memorial Stadium. After that? It was just an exercise in piling up statistics.

I much preferred it when power conference teams played one or maybe two tune-ups per season and then played a peer in their other nonconference game.

Indiana has moved away from that model, most recently by dropping Louisville, and perhaps history has taught them it’s necessary to beat up on tomato cans to get a bowl bid at the end of the rainbow.

I understand it and decry it all at once. Fans want quality matchups, so I can’t blame them one bit for ignoring mismatches like this even if it does make the path to a bowl that much easier.

The teams concoct reasons or create the economic conditions to make these games matter.

Fans know better. They’ll jump on-board when there’s something in it for them. A huge win over a Big Ten team would feel fantastic.

A 74-point win over a very bad FCS team? Outside of the acknowledgement of the domination of an inferior opponent? It doesn’t feel like much at all.