This Week in Our Dumb, Beautiful Sport: Indiana Turns College Football Upside Down, the SEC is Bad, and Chaos Reigns

By Ryan Ginn on January 3, 2026 at 9:05 am
Curt Cignetti at the Rose Bowl
Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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Welcome to This Week in Our Dumb Beautiful Sport, a weekly look at the chaos that reigns over the most perfectly imperfect world of college football.

For all the bellyaching about the first-round blowouts, the College Football Playoff has delivered no shortage of compelling storylines. Our dumb, beautiful sport is more likely than not going to deliver a first-time national champion, and the current favorite is the most unlikely one of all. 

IT'S CURT CIGNETTI'S WORLD AND WE'RE ALL JUST LIVING IN IT

Here's a couple of sentences nobody in the known universe ever thought they'd read: Indiana beat the brakes off of Alabama. In football. I repeat: Indiana -- yes, that Indiana --tore apart college football's army of ring-chasing 5-stars. 

Two years ago, Alabama was also playing in the Rose Bowl as a part of the final four-team College Football Playoff. The Tide lost in overtime to eventual champion Michigan in Nick Saban's last football game. Meanwhile, the Hoosiers spent that season getting blown out right and left in a 3-9 season that got coach Tom Allen fired. Two of their three wins were against Indiana State and Akron. The Hoosiers lost to 4-8 Purdue. Rutgers beat them by double digits. 

Two years later, one of college football's most historically awful programs laid waste to one of its most decorated. The Hoosiers routed Alabama in a 38-3 win in the Rose Bowl. It was about as lopsided as the score indicated, and Indiana frankly got cheated out of a shutout because Alabama decided to give up trying to win and attempted a short field goal down 24-0 that turned a three-touchdown deficit into a... three-touchdown deficit. 

Regardless of what happens the rest of the way -- although I think it will end with a trophy -- the last two years of Indiana football is one of the all-time great stories in college football. My dog could wake up tomorrow knowing how to talk and I think I'd still be more surprised by watching Indiana beat Oregon in Eugene, beat Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship, and then absolutely demolish Alabama in the College Football Playoff. 

In fairness, Cignetti did warn us this was coming. Being able to walk the walk after talking that talk is just the best. 

NEW MONEY BEATS NEWER MONEY

In a battle of teams who are quite open about trying to buy a national championship instead of pretending otherwise (frankly, I respect the honesty), Oregon smothered Texas Tech in a 23-0 shutout. 

A nightmare game from quarterback Behren Morton and the rest of the Red Raiders offense put the stellar Texas Tech defense in a series of binds that eventually broke it. I thought the Texas Tech defense played great for most of the game, but Oregon held the ball for nearly 40 of the game's 60 minutes and took advantage of short fields all game long -- including touchdown drives of 6 yards and 27 yards. 

OHIO STATE'S REPEAT BID DENIED 

Ohio State's season came to an early end thanks to a 14-0 deficit that the Buckeyes couldn't quite escape in a 24-14 loss to Miami (Fla.). Interestingly, the Hurricanes finished with only a 30 percent postgame win expectancy, which validates my feeling that the Buckeyes were probably one ill-advised Julian Sayin pass away from advancing.

But that pass did get thrown, and Miami went from likely soon being tied 7-7 to holding a 14-0 lead that they protected well. One thing I think Ohio State will regret is the tempo they played with, especially in the second half. As the better and more talented team, a game with more possessions would favor Ohio State. But instead of pushing the ball and trying to give its offense as many chances as possible, the Buckeyes seemingly shortened the game. One drive in particular stood out to me during the fourth quarter – a 7-play drive that only gained 6 yards (thanks in large part to a holding penalty) but ate up 4:20 of clock at a point when Ohio State needed as much time as possible. 

OLE MISS' WEIRD SEASON MARCHES ON

In one of the weirdest arrangements I can ever remember, Ole Miss told Lane Kiffin to kick rocks after he took the LSU job but also got LSU to agree to let the offensive assistants joining him in Baton Rouge still coach the playoff. As a result, the entire staff minus Kiffin is still in place for the time being but half of them are also working for a rival team as the transfer portal opens. 

The soon-to-be departed offensive assistants more than held up their end of the bargain in the Sugar Bowl, though. Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. and quarterback Trinidad Chambliss got whatever they wanted throughout most of the game in a 39-34 win over No. 3 Georgia. 

As I wrote in November, Kiffin is going to have to live with the fact that he gave up a legitimate chance to win a national championship in a season without a dominant team that was an overwhelming favorite to win it all. With that being said, everyone pretending like defensive coordinator/new head coach Pete Golding is the mastermind of this playoff run while the Rebels put up a million points thanks to a group of assistants that is technically on loan from their rival is a bit rich. 

JUST GOING TO LEAVE THIS HERE

I think about this 2021 tweet from my friend Luke Johnson, who covers the New Orleans Saints for the Times-Picayune, quite a bit. It felt as true as ever on Thursday night as Georgia gave away a game it had no business losing. 

THE SEC'S NO GOOD, VERY BAD BOWL SEASON

Bowl season has not been kind to the SEC. (Then again, neither was the regular season.) Let's recap:

  • Alabama 34, Oklahoma 24 (1-1)
  • Ole Miss 41, Tulane 10 (2-1)
  • Miami (Fla.) 10, Texas A&M 3 (2-2)
  • Virginia 13, Missouri 7 (2-3)
  • Houston 38, LSU 35 (2-4)
  • Illinois 30, Tennessee 28 (2-5)
  • Texas 41, Michigan 27 (3-5)
  • Iowa 34, Vanderbilt 27 (3-6)
  • Indiana 38, Alabama 3 (3-7)
  • Ole Miss 39, Georgia 34 (4-8)

Yikes.

A REFRESHING FINAL FOUR

Thanks to Indiana and Oregon, there is a 50 percent chance that this season will produce a first-time national champion for the first time since 1996, when the Florida Gators won their first title. One of those two teams is guaranteed to make the final, and their opponent will be at a minimum a couple decades removed from their last crown. Miami's most recent national championship came in the 2001 season, and Ole Miss has not won a championship since 1962. 

Since the four-team playoff began in 2014, this is the first time the semifinals have not had at least one of Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, or Ohio State. Most of those years included multiple of those teams. 

FIRST-ROUND BYE DEBATE RENEWS

Teams with first-round byes went 0-4 last year, which raised some eyebrows but was also somewhat understandable due to an unbalanced seeding structure where Boise State and Arizona State ended up as the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds. However, the struggles continued this year with a 1-3 performance from top four seeds. Only Indiana escaped the bye week blues, albeit in dominant fashion. 

I think it's worth noting that the betting favorite in these eight games went 6-2. In addition to Boise State and Arizona State being underdogs last year, 2024 Oregon was also an underdog to Ohio State and Carson Beck-less Georgia was an underdog against Notre Dame. This year, the No. 5 Ducks were favored over No. 4 Texas Tech. As a result, Miami over Ohio State and Ole Miss over Georgia were the only betting upsets of those eight games.

With that being said, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to an expansion to 16 that ended byes and created more on-campus games. I also think starting the playoff a week earlier would help on all fronts. 

TWEET OF THE CENTURY

I genuinely feel for the social media manager who had to press send on this knowing what was going to happen. 

PLAY OF THE WEEK

On third down with less than 30 seconds to go, Trinidad Chambliss found De'Zhaun Stribling wide open after he snuck past the Georgia defense. The completion put Ole Miss in range for the game-winning field goal that sent the Rebels to the semifinal. 

IDIOT OF THE WEEK

Plenty of candidates this week! However, I'm going to give it to everyone who acted like the world would have ended if this three-loss Alabama team had been left out of the playoff only to then watch them have to escape a 17-0 deficit against an extremely flawed Oklahoma team before getting ripped up 38-3 in the quarterfinal. It's fine that they made it, but unlike anyone employed by ESPN I wouldn't have lost a single second of sleep if they hadn't. 

REF JAIL INMATE OF THE WEEK

While it may have been technically correct, I don't think any of us needed the Sugar Bowl to include a final second that felt like half an hour.  To recap:

  • Ole Miss kicked the game-winning field goal with 6 seconds left on the clock.
  • The Rebels kicked off, which ended with an attempted lateral by Georgia hitting the end zone pylon for a safety
  • The officials ruled there was 1 second on the clock when that happened, forcing Georgia to attempt a free kick following the safety
  • Georgia recovered an onside kick. 
  • Because Ole Miss never touched the ball on the free kick, the clock never ran. A second remained on the clock.
  • This gave Georgia one more offensive play down 39-34. 
  • Instead of attempting a Hail Mary, the Bulldogs opted for a short pass and about 800 laterals before Ole Miss got the stop. 

Again, most of this is not the fault of the refs in a technical sense, but I think we all would have been better off if none of it ever happened. 

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