Indiana’s first loss in almost 2 years shows Hoosiers a new, painful side to being in college football’s top tier

Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire/AP

Descending the stairwell back to Earth — after a delirious 22-game win streak came screeching to a stunning end, after the biggest football game in a generation on the Indiana campus fizzled to a disastrous 19-15 loss to Ohio State on a boneheaded play more reminiscent of the pre-delirium era — Indiana football officially arrived.

Fans who opted to walk down from the top of Memorial Stadium rather than take the elevator took turns venting their frustration about the loss, their ire growing as if they were descending through Dante’s levels of Hell.

The first circle belonged to Nick Marsh, who — if you’re being kind — mistimed his fancy footwork (or, if you were in the stairwell, wildly fouled up). On fourth-and-four — fourth-and-ballgame, fourth-and-win streak, fourth-and-dethroning Big Ten royalty Ohio State — Marsh snuck to the left edge of the end zone. He was so wide open that, when TV cameras showed the replay, there was literally no one else - not an Indiana player, not an Ohio State defender - in the shot.

The Hoosiers paid handsomely for their big pickup via the transfer portal, luring him from Michigan State. Marsh easily hauled in the pass from Josh Hoover and took a step into the end zone.

Or at least that was the idea.

On Marsh’s first step, he casually put down his left foot and the outside edge of his cleat caught the white edge that rims the red paint marking out of bounds. As in-game operators mistakenly shot off fireworks, Marsh put his hands on his head, immediately aware of his mistake.

No touchdown. No win. No win streak. No unseating the kings.

“Butt naked f**king wide open,’’ one fan screamed as he marched down the stairs. Another bemoaned the amount of money spent on Marsh’s NIL deal, using similar obscene language.

Spiraling downward, next came Josh Howard’s undressing. The TCU transfer quarterback completed 20 of 40 passes, regularly sailing passes over even the super-glue-sure hands of Charlie Becker. He wasn’t awful, but he wasn’t great, committing the cardinal sin of being human. That is not a familiar affliction here, not after the practically sainted Fernando Mendoza taught people about fiscal responsibility, hobnobbed with priests at the local Catholic church, charmed mothers and zinged passes on Saturdays like a video game avatar.

A courageous teenager battling brain cancer gets the surprise of a lifetime from his beloved Florida Gators

“It wouldn’t have come to this,’’ a woman screamed over her shoulder to a trailing pack of similarly combustible Hoosiers, “if we didn’t f**k around.’’

And finally, as the stairway gave way to the ground, there came the final hard smack of reality. Thousands of people, accustomed to leaving their gridiron grounds in glee, were rendered near speechless as they morosely walked out the gates.

One man, summing up the shock, anger and frustration for everyone, stared straight ahead and at one in particular, gathering up whatever air was left in his lungs and yelled one more f-bomb for good measure.

Welcome to success, Indiana. Isn’t it awful?

It begets the most precious and precarious gift of all in sports - the joy and misery of expectation. In the grand scheme of things, in the 2026 football season that remains very much viable for the Hoosiers, this loss is barely a flesh wound. But forgive Indiana fans their level of reaction. They have not tasted this particular pleasant poison before.

For the past two-plus seasons, happy Hoosier fans have lived in a near-fugue state, their historically impossibly awful team becoming the best in the land. Until this glorious fall Saturday afternoon gave way to the hints of early evening, Indiana football — once the losingest team in all of college football — hadn’t tasted their ordinary helping of defeat for 666 days. Counted in that giddy stretch of unexpected euphoria was actual perfection, a run from August through January without defeat, capped off with, of all ridiculous things, a national championship.

Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire/AP

So new was the entire concept of winning that, for a hot minute, it was fair to question if Indiana really understood its new place in the hierarchy. It still felt quaint, as if IU hadn’t quite embraced the arrogance they suddenly were in ownership of.

Fans walked around downtown in gear declaring their dominance - national championship tees and Rose Bowl jackets - and businesses hung signs in homage to their head coach’s brashness. A blackboard outside of Pitaya, a women’s clothing store, cleverly declared, “It’s simple. We’re the cutest. Google us,” referring to Curt Cignetti’s introductory words at his first press conference - though odds are strong that the coach never much worried about his OOTD (outfit of the day).

But a bartender’s lament about the overwhelming crowd mid-afternoon at The Tap felt a little, well, misplaced. The place was full, but compared to Oxford, Mississippi a month ago or State College on the eve of a white out, it didn’t quite hit the mayhem stage. There was no line to get in. Even the wait at the popular Nick’s Hut was short up until at least 4 p.m.

And while the marquee on the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre declared, “Buckle Up, Buckeyes. This is Hoosier Country,’’ Ohio State fans walked around town largely unmolested. Try that during, say, “The Game” between Ohio State and Michigan next month, or during the Iron Bowl at either Auburn or Alabama.

To be fair, Bloomington eventually got its dog on. People started lining up pre-dawn to find a place in the Breakfast Club, the morning drinking gameday den at The Upstairs Pub, and the tailgating lots were full despite the noon kickoff.

It still felt Midwest polite.

Until it wasn’t. Because it was not just the loss but the way IU lost that stung. Under Cignetti, the Hoosiers have been equal parts flawless and gutty, refusing to make mistakes to lose games and always finding ways to win them. They named a popular beer here the 4th and 5 Cream Ale, in reference and deference to Mendoza’s gutty 12-yard touchdown run in the national title game on fourth and five. That was the standard.

A week after the defense was gashed by Nebraska, the offense sputtered to find its rhythm.

“It sucks, you know?” Becker said. “There were a lot of opportunities, a lot of areas we could have capitalized on. We left a lot short here and that’s frustrating to feel like we kind of beat ourselves in this game.”

Trailing 7-3, Indiana drove to the Buckeyes’ 14, but Hoover missed a wide-open Brock Schott on third down. A doinked field goal off the left upright left Indiana with nothing to show for its 66-yard drive. To start the second half, Hoover found Davion Chandler for a quick slant, but Chandler fumbled, the first time the Hoosiers had coughed up the ball in 1,437 plays. Another third-quarter possession ended at Ohio State’s 33, when Hoover was panicked on a blindside blitz and after a miscommunication on third-and-six late in the third, Cignetti had to settle for a 55-yard field goal try. It didn’t work.

The most painful, of course, came as it always does - at the end.

James Black/Icon Sportswire/AP

In what may count as the real biggest news out of this game, Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin left the game after a sack in the fourth quarter. Buckeye coach Ryan Day said he will be out “several weeks,’’ which might cause a legit shakeup not just in the Big Ten, but in the national title race and the Heisman chase (star wide receiver Jeremiah Smith could use his QB to get him the ball). Backup Luke Fahey did his best to not drown as the Buckeyes held the slim 4–point lead, but when Hoover and the Hoosiers started marching down the field with time closing, it felt like another miracle in the making.

Indiana has hosted exactly three ranked-on-ranked games since 1993 - entirely because Indiana for so long wasn’t ranked - and one came during the Covid-19 pandemic when 1,034 showed up to watch No. 23 IU versus No. 22 Michigan State.

This, No. 5 Indiana versus No. 4 Ohio State, was the big one. Though the Hoosiers bested the Buckeyes in last year’s Big Ten Championship and won the title, Ohio State remains the Big Ten standard. In its entire existence, Indiana beat OSU at home twice, once in 1988 when then the stench of the loss bothered Ohio State coach John Cooper so much that he remarked afterward, “they are either a great football team or we are pathetic,” and once in 1904, when Frank ‘Bunny’ Hare scored on two dropkicks for an 8-0 win, inspiring Indiana students to go wild “parading in the streets clad in their night shirts,” per the Indianapolis Star.

Kamil Krzaczynski/Imagn/Reuters

Backed by success, Indiana’s Curt Cignetti boldly touts Big Ten as best conference in college football

And with the win and all of that history right there in his hands, all Marsh had to do was put his foot down.

“It’s not Nick’s fault, right?” Hoover said. “Like if I put it a little bit further inside, it’s an easy catch, right?” Hoover said.

Smarting and humbled, the players insisted that this will only make them better but they, too, have been spoiled by success. This season has been pockmarked by teams winning big games and falling flat the next; Indiana has to go to Michigan next week to try and buck that trend.

“The sun will come up tomorrow,” said Cignetti, whose Little Orphan Annie-esque optimism might have been only slightly less unsettling than the actual loss. “Everything is still ahead of us. We can accomplish everything that we want except going undefeated.”

A fair, reasonable summation, even if people here aren’t in the mood right now to be fair or reasonable

乔·罗宾斯/Icon Sportswire/美联社

在经历了令人陶醉的 22 连胜之后，印第安纳大学橄榄球队以 19-15 惨败于俄亥俄州立大学，这场在印第安纳大学校园里举行的近几十年来最重要的橄榄球比赛，以一场更像是狂喜时代之前的愚蠢战术而告终，印第安纳大学橄榄球队也从此回到了现实。

那些选择从纪念体育场顶楼步行下来而不是乘坐电梯的球迷们轮流发泄着对失利的沮丧，他们的愤怒与日俱增，仿佛他们正在一步步深入但丁笔下的地狱。

第一个圆圈属于尼克·马什，说句客气话，他花哨的脚步动作时机把握错了（或者，如果你当时在楼梯间，那就是彻底搞砸了）。在第四档还剩四码的情况下——比赛胜负的关键时刻，也是拿下连胜的关键时刻，更是击败十大联盟霸主俄亥俄州立大学的关键时刻——马什悄悄溜到了端区左侧边缘。他完全无人盯防，以至于电视回放时，画面里竟然空无一人——既没有印第安纳大学的球员，也没有俄亥俄州立大学的防守队员。

印第安纳大学为了通过转会市场签下这名球员付出了不菲的代价，他从密歇根州立大学被拉了过来。马什轻松接住了乔什·胡佛的传球，并迈入了达阵区。

或者说，至少最初是这么想的。

马什迈出第一步时，漫不经心地放下左脚，鞋钉外侧边缘却勾住了界外线红色油漆标记的白色边缘。游戏操作员误放了烟花，马什立刻意识到自己犯了错，双手抱头。

没有达阵，没有胜利，没有连胜，没有撼动王者地位。

“光着屁股，大开眼界！”一名球迷一边尖叫着一边走下楼梯。另一名球迷则用类似的污言秽语抱怨马什的NIL（姓名、形象和肖像权）合同花费了太多钱。

接下来，乔什·霍华德的表现开始急转直下。这位从德克萨斯基督教大学转学来的四分卫40次传球仅完成20次，而且经常把球传过查理·贝克尔那双稳如磐石的手。他的表现不算糟糕，但也谈不上出色，犯下了人之常情。这种毛病在这里并不常见，毕竟，在费尔南多·门多萨这位近乎圣人般的人物出现之后，人们再也不会犯这种错误了。门多萨不仅教导人们如何理财，还与当地天主教堂的神父们谈笑风生，深受母亲们的喜爱，而且每到周六，他都能像电子游戏里的角色一样精准地传球。

一位勇敢的青少年正在与脑癌作斗争，却意外地收到了他挚爱的佛罗里达鳄鱼队送来的惊喜。

“如果我们当初没瞎胡闹，事情就不会发展到这种地步，”一个女人回头对着跟在后面的一群同样脾气暴躁的印第安纳人喊道。

最后，当阶梯延伸至地面时，残酷的现实狠狠地击中了所有人。成千上万的人们，以往总是兴高采烈地离开橄榄球场，此刻却几乎说不出话来，只能垂头丧气地走出大门。

一名男子，代表了所有人的震惊、愤怒和沮丧，直视前方，尤其盯着其中一人，吸干了肺里剩下的所有空气，又大声喊了一声脏话，以示强调。

欢迎来到成功之地，印第安纳州。是不是糟透了？

它孕育了体育运动中最珍贵也最脆弱的礼物——期待带来的喜悦与痛苦。从长远来看，对于印第安纳大学的“印第安纳人队”来说，2026赛季仍然充满希望，这场失利不过是皮外伤。但请原谅印第安纳球迷如此激动。他们从未尝过这种甜蜜的苦涩滋味。

过去两个多赛季以来，印第安纳大学的球迷们欣喜若狂，仿佛置身梦境，他们那支历史上战绩糟糕透顶的球队竟然摇身一变，成为全美最强。直到这个美好的秋日周六下午，暮色渐浓，印第安纳大学橄榄球队——这支曾经是大学橄榄球界输球最多的球队——已经666天没有尝到失败的滋味了。在这段令人眩晕的意外狂喜中，他们创造了真正的完美：从八月到一月保持不败，最终，令人难以置信的是，他们竟然赢得了全国冠军。

Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire/美联社

胜利的概念如此新颖，以至于在短暂的一段时间里，人们不禁质疑印第安纳大学是否真正理解了自己在联盟等级制度中的新地位。这种感觉仍然有些古怪，仿佛印第安纳大学还没有完全接受他们突然拥有的那种傲慢自大。

球迷们身着彰显统治力的装备——全国冠军T恤和玫瑰碗夹克——在市中心闲逛，商家们也挂出标语，向他们主教练的豪言壮语致敬。一家名为Pitaya的女装店外，一块黑板上巧妙地写着：“很简单，我们最可爱。谷歌一下我们。” 这句话出自科特·西格内蒂在首次新闻发布会上的开场白——不过，这位教练很可能从未真正关心过自己的穿搭。

但下午时分，酒吧老板抱怨The Tap人满为患，这番话听起来有点……不太恰当。酒吧确实爆满，但与一个月前密西西比州的牛津镇或暴雪前夕的州立学院相比，这里还远未达到混乱的程度。进门根本不用排队。就连颇受欢迎的Nick's Hut，至少到下午4点之前，排队的人也不多。

尽管布斯克-丘姆利剧院的招牌上赫然写着“系好安全带，俄亥俄州立大学的球迷们，这里是印第安纳州的地盘”，俄亥俄州立大学的球迷们却几乎毫发无损地在城里闲逛。但想想看，下个月俄亥俄州立大学和密歇根大学的“世纪大战”或者奥本大学和阿拉巴马大学之间的“铁碗赛”期间，情况可就没那么好了。

平心而论，布卢明顿最终还是进入了状态。人们天还没亮就开始排队，就为了在“早餐俱乐部”（Breakfast Club）——楼上酒吧（The Upstairs Pub）——找到一个位置，那里是比赛日早晨的饮酒聚会场所。尽管中午才开球，但停车场已经爆满。

依然保留着中西部地区特有的礼貌。

直到后来并非如此。因为真正令人痛心的不仅仅是输球，更是印第安纳大学输球的方式。在西格内蒂的带领下，印第安纳大学的“印第安纳人队”一直保持着近乎完美的竞技状态和顽强拼搏的精神，他们拒绝犯错导致失利，并且总能找到赢球的方法。为了纪念门多萨在全国冠军赛中第四档五码时那次勇敢的12码达阵跑，他们将当地一款很受欢迎的啤酒命名为“第四档五码奶油艾尔”。这曾是他们的标杆。

防守端被内布拉斯加队打得溃不成军一周后，进攻端也迟迟找不到节奏。

“感觉糟透了，你知道吗？”贝克尔说道。“我们有很多机会，很多方面都可以把握住。我们错失了很多良机，感觉自己在这场比赛中输给了自己，这真让人沮丧。”

印第安纳大学以3-7落后，一路推进到俄亥俄州立大学的14码线，但胡佛在第三档进攻中错失了空位接球的布罗克·肖特。随后，印第安纳大学的66码推进进攻以一记击中左侧门柱的任意球告终。下半场开始，胡佛找到戴维恩·钱德勒完成了一次快速斜传，但钱德勒却掉球了，这是印第安纳大学1437次进攻中首次出现掉球。第三节的另一次进攻在俄亥俄州立大学的33码线处结束，胡佛在一次盲侧突袭中慌乱应对。第三节末段，在第三档还剩6码时，由于沟通失误，西格内蒂只能选择尝试55码的任意球。但这次射门仍然没有命中。

当然，最痛苦的总是发生在最后。

James Black/Icon Sportswire/美联社

这场比赛最大的新闻或许是俄亥俄州立大学四分卫朱利安·萨因在第四节被擒杀后离场。七叶树队主教练瑞恩·戴表示他将缺席“数周”，这不仅可能对十大联盟的格局造成重大影响，甚至可能波及全国冠军争夺战和海斯曼奖的角逐（明星外接手杰里迈亚·史密斯需要他的四分卫来传球）。替补四分卫卢克·法伊竭尽全力，帮助七叶树队保持着4分的微弱领先优势，但当胡佛和印第安纳大学的球员们在比赛时间所剩无几的情况下开始反扑时，人们感觉又一个奇迹即将发生。

自 1993 年以来，印第安纳州只举办过三场排名对排名的比赛——完全是因为印第安纳州长期以来都没有排名——其中一场是在新冠疫情期间，当时有 1034 人到场观看了排名第 23 的印第安纳大学对阵排名第 22 的密歇根州立大学的比赛。

这场印第安纳大学（排名第五）对阵俄亥俄州立大学（排名第四）的比赛意义重大。尽管印第安纳大学在去年的十大联盟锦标赛中击败了俄亥俄州立大学并最终夺冠，但俄亥俄州立大学仍然是十大联盟的标杆。印第安纳大学建校以来只在主场两次战胜过俄亥俄州立大学，一次是在1988年，当时的失利让俄亥俄州立大学主教练约翰·库珀耿耿于怀，赛后他感叹道：“他们要么是一支伟大的球队，要么我们就是一支可悲的球队。”另一次是在1904年，弗兰克·“兔子”·黑尔两次飞踢得分，帮助球队以8比0大胜，据《印第安纳波利斯星报》报道，这场胜利激励了印第安纳大学的学生们“穿着睡衣在街上游行庆祝”。

Kamil Krzaczynski/Imagn/路透社

凭借着辉煌的战绩，印第安纳大学的科特·西格内蒂大胆宣称十大联盟是大学橄榄球界最好的联盟。

胜利和所有历史性的成就都掌握在马什手中，他所要做的就是全力以赴。

“这不是尼克的错，对吧？”胡佛说。“如果我把球再往里放一点，就很容易接住了，对吧？”胡佛说。

球员们既感到沮丧又感到羞愧，但他们坚称这只会让他们变得更强，不过他们也同样被成功惯坏了。本赛季，很多球队都是赢下关键比赛后，下一场就一蹶不振；印第安纳下周必须客场挑战密歇根，才能打破这种局面。

“太阳明天照常升起，”西格内蒂说道，他那如同小孤女安妮般的乐观或许比实际的失败更令人不安。“一切都还在前方。除了保持不败之外，我们能实现所有想做的事情。”

即便现在这里的人可能没心情讲究公平或理性，但这仍然是一个公正合理的总结。