Rece Davis evaluates how Ohio State result will affect Indiana's College Football Playoff chances

Indiana has the week off, but the conversation surrounding the Hoosiers hasn’t slowed. It’s picked up now that the Hoosiers are No. 5 in the College Football Playoff rankings with just three weeks of the regular season remaining.

Indiana has already notched its first-ever 10-win season under new head coach Curt Cignetti. The Hoosiers have a top-five date with No. 2 Ohio State in Columbus next week. They’ll wrap up their 12-game slate with a home game against in-state rival Purdue, which is currently 1-8 on the year.

ESPN’s Rece Davis joined “The Pat McAfee Show” Wednesday and was asked the question everyone wants to know the answer to, at least as it pertains to Indiana: Would a big loss to Ohio State knock Indiana out of the top 12?

“I think it’s possible if it’s a big loss,” Davis said. “I was just thinking about this today, because I kind of get put out with the people who, immediately, no matter what the committee says, they’re outraged, they’re disgusted, ‘How can this happen?’ They don’t know what they’re talking about.

“Indiana has answered the questions that at least I deem important: ‘Do you look like a playoff team? Have you handled your competition well? How often have you played at your best?’ And the only place they fall short is, ‘Who have you done it against?'”

Indiana is one of four remaining undefeated teams in the FBS. The Hoosiers didn’t trail in a game this season until the month of November. Their lone one-score game took place last week against Michigan, and Indiana held on for a 20-15 victory over the Wolverines.

The transfer-heavy Hoosiers are second nationally with 43.9 points per game this year. They’re also seventh in the country with 13.8 points per game allowed in 2024.

As Davis said, however, Indiana’s strength of schedule (SOS) isn’t nearly as impressive. The Hoosiers rank 100th in that category, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index. No other team in the top five of this week’s CFP rankings has a SOS rank lower than 56th, per the FPI.

“So I do think the way they play against Ohio State will be important,” Davis said. “I don’t foresee this happening — I think Indiana’s a really good football team, but if they were to have happened to them by Ohio State what, say, the Hoosiers did to Nebraska, beat them 56-7, then I think it calls into question some of the other things that we’ve seen, most notably, ‘OK, who have you done this against?’

“If you go and play well, and you just happen not to beat a team that I think is capable of winning the national championship in their stadium, then I think Indiana’s a lock to make the playoff. I think it’s far more likely than not that they will regardless of what happens in Columbus.”

Barring a catastrophic upset loss to Purdue in the regular season finale, a respectable performance on the road against the Buckeyes should do the trick for the Hoosiers, according to Davis.

“If they play well against Ohio State, I think they looked like a playoff team from start to finish over the course of the season and deserve to be there, but that strength of schedule number is not one of the things that’s going to help their cause. It’s going to be one of the things that they have overcome by the way they played.”

When a team doesn’t have as strong of a SOS, the eye test plays a larger role for the CFP selection committee, Davis explained.

“When you watch the team play, are they executing well? Do they look like a playoff team?” Davis said. “It’s not just recruiting stars or size, speed, anything like that. How do they execute? Do they look like a team that is worthy of being on that stage, and I think Indiana has passed that test easily.”