Should Ohio State football worry more about Indiana than Michigan over the next few years?
Ohio State football barely squeaked by the Indiana Hoosiers last year when it barely won 42-35. And yeah, the Hoosiers return the majority of their studs that burnt the Bucks last season. Indiana is a dark-horse favorite to win the Big Ten and Tom Allen has done an incredible job building that Hoosier program.
If the progress Indiana has made on the football field scares the Buckeyes, then the progress it has been making on the recruiting trail should also be alarming. The Hoosiers already had two 4-star commits before the month of July hit and on July 7, they snagged another 4-star stud in Omar Cooper.
Meanwhile, the Michigan program is in a bigger slumber than a Rip Van Winkle convention.
Indiana now has Dasan McCullough, who flipped to the Hoosiers from the Buckeyes, Trevell Mullen, and the aforementioned Cooper. Their recruiting class currently ranks No. 5 in the Big Ten, which may not seem like a big deal considering Ohio State has dominated in recruiting on a national scale, but Indiana’s rise is something to monitor.
Meanwhile, OSU is running circles around everything maize and blue.
In 2020, Indiana had the No. 12 ranked recruiting class in the Big Ten only beating Rutgers and Illinois. The 2021 Hoosiers class was again ranked No. 12, only ranking ahead of Illinois and Purdue. Indiana is currently ranked ahead of programs like Michigan State, Northwestern, and Minnesota in the 2022 class.
Meanwhile, Michigan can’t seem to develop the decent talent that it does get.
The Hoosier program has been on fire lately and if it has another season where it competes for a Big Ten Championship and can hit double-digit victories, this is a program that could realistically compete with Ohio State far better than Michigan can even dream of doing.
So #iufb didn’t get a commit today? I was starting to expect one every day now. More to come soon for sure.
— Wes Reynolds (@WesReynolds1) July 13, 2021
While Michigan continues to almost resign to the fact that it can’t compete against Ohio State in anything, Indiana might be best positioned over the next few years to be a bigger threat than the Wolverines, much the same way it has been for the last couple of years.
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