Dumping Them Out: Is Indiana CHEATING?!?

John Rich1/11/2026 9:11 PM

Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. The show where the GIFs are usually recycled, and almost always real (unless I get fooled by AI).

Before I use this blog to walk Indiana Hoosiers once again (which I promise I'll stop doing eventually. Only 1 more weekend until the national championship). Are the Chicago Bears having the most entertaining NFL season of all time?

They have to be close. Maybe I'm only noticing their games more because we have so many Bears fans at Barstool. But off the top of my head, the only other teams I can remember playing games that so consistently come down to the wire are the San Diego Chargers back in the Philip Rivers day. It seems like there were 10 straight years where ever Sunday afternoon you could set your watch to Philip Rivers getting the ball back down 1 score with two minutes left in the game.

Although I just searched "QB's with most game winning drives", and it turns out Philip Rivers is only tied for 14th all-time (35 total). And one of the QB's he's tied with is Derek Carr, who played half as many seasons as Rivers. In 2016, the Raiders had 12 wins, and 7 of those games featured Derek Carr game winning drives. In 2021, the Raiders had 10 wins, and 6 of those games featured Derek Carr game winning drives. What a career that guy had. One of the all-time great QB's who also sucked.

Back to Bears-Packers real quick. I was pondering this last night. I think the NFL really only has 3 rivalries that matter, or even come close to feeling like a college football rivalry. It's Bears-Packers, Ravens-Steelers, and Eagles-Cowboys. You can throw in other combinations of AFC North and NFC East teams. There's been long stretches of great rivalries that were quarterback based (Patriots-Colts with Brady & Manning, Chiefs-Bills with Mahomes & Allen). But no other rivalries consistently come close to those three.

Ok now time to ramble about the Indiana Hoosiers for a bit. It's amazing how quickly the narrative surrounding Indiana football changed. Remember the takes people were having at this time last year?

Ok that second one doesn't necessarily apply. It's just a hilarious take. I have no clue why Bill Simmons thought Indiana getting their ass kicked in the playoffs last year would be an indicator that Bill Belichick would be a great college football coach. Which he could still turn out to be (technically). I just don't see how those things are related in the slightest. But my point is, Indiana was so overmatched last season it had people sick to their stomachs. Even up until the B1G Championship this year (and even leading up to the Rose Bowl for people in SEC country) the narrative was, "Indiana doesn't have the players to compete with the best teams in college football"

Fast forward to January, and the narrative has now flipped to, "The Hoosiers are so big and strong that it's unfair."

It was bound to happen eventually. There's no way we could let Indiana cruise through the playoffs to a National Championship game without uncovering some nefarious reason for them being so dominant. As it turns out, Indiana has exploited the transfer portal in way that the rest of college football simply wasn't allowed to…

In fact, college football is so far gone that the National Championship game will feature a team with 2 players who graduated high school in 2019.

(Thanks for the tip Jack Mac.)

Whatever. That's to be expected. People aren't wrong about Indiana having an old ass team. We may come to learn that Curt Cignetti figured something out before the rest of college football did, and for the next however many years the best teams in the sport will be loaded with even more 22-23 year olds than the Hoosiers have this year. But I certainly never thought I'd see the day where Indiana football was so dominant that people on the internet would be accusing them of CHEATING!

Incredible stuff. College football, man. What a sport. People throw around the phrase "broken brain" a little too much nowadays. But Indiana football has really done it. They're shattering people's entire worldviews. Indiana MUST be cheating. Or maybe it's just that the rules of college football (i.e. the transfer portal) have changed everything. That Curt Cignetti is a phenomenal coach. That his 3-star recruits have turned out to be WAY better than people thought. And that perhaps… in some cases… experience is more important than raw talent.