Tuesday night was all about the state of Indiana.
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish, located in South Bend, were forced to forfeit the 21 football games they won in 2012 and 2013, due to academic misconduct during those seasons.
The Indiana Hoosiers, located in Bloomington, suffered a truly shocking loss to the IPFW Mastodons, located in Fort Wayne.
And the NCAA, headquartered, located in Indianapolis, enjoyed another successful evening of torturous debate over the merits of various college football teams, thanks to the weekly reveal of the College Football Playoff rankings. OK, fine, this one doesn’t have much to do with Indiana, but just play along.
Anyway, here comes an Indiana-heavy edition of The Cheat Sheet.
Indiana goes down to a school you’ve never heard of
Indiana is a massive flagship university with a deep hoops tradition. Its basketball team is ranked No. 3 in the country. Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne is a forgotten state school 200 miles away, with an athletic department that only gained Division I status 15 years ago. Its basketball team might compete for the Summit League title in a good season.
So when the two teams faced off Wednesday night in Fort Wayne, the game should have been like any other November matchup between a title contender and an anonymous mid-major: a one-sided affair all but wrapped up by halftime.
Instead IPFW pulled off a shocking upset, beating Indiana 71-68 in overtime and prompting a raucous celebration that included some kid drinking out of a bleach bottle.
Celebration! pic.twitter.com/nx5LW8wE8o
— Fort Wayne Mastodons (@GoMastodons) November 23, 2016
Sneaking booze into a game in a Clorox bottle seems…dangerous, but college kids are resourceful (h/t @deadspin) https://t.co/HH04P0yLli
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) November 23, 2016
In his postgame interview on Big Ten Network, Jon Coffman couldn’t even be that excited about the miraculous win because he was still so excited Indiana had actually come to Fort Wayne to play at the Mastodons’ gym.
"They'll be talking about Indiana coming to Fort Wayne for the next 50 years." (via @BigTenNetwork) https://t.co/F9TutLl1F5
— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) November 23, 2016
We may not see an upset so dramatic the rest of the college basketball season (or at least until March), and it could be a while before we see a mid-major pull of this caliber of victory in its own gym.
Oh and if you’re wondering what a mastodon is, Wikipedia says it’s a “species of extinct mammutid proboscideans in the genus Mammut, distantly related to elephants, that inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 to 11,000 years ago.”
So there you have it.
The NCAA comes down hard on Notre Dame
One of the reasons everyone hates Notre Dame so much is the smug way the university and its alums (no offense, Notre Dame alums) talk about the value of academics in college sports and the importance of “doing it the right way.”
So it was hard not to enjoy a liiittle bit of schadenfreude Tuesday when the NCAA announced the Fighting Irish must forfeit the 21 games they won in 2012 and 2013 due to an academic scandal that according to ESPN, involved a student trainer provided “impermissible academic benefits” to a number of football players. The negated victories came with a reprimand from the NCAA and one year of probation for the Notre Dame program.
Of course, this isn’t the first we’ve heard of academic scandal at Notre Dame. In 2013 former Fighting Irish quarterback Everett Golson was suspended for the entire season after being caught cheating on a test. A year later, four other players were implicated in a separate brouhaha.
Anyway, the NCAA’s decision Tuesday, which Notre Dame is appealing, means we’re now supposed to pretend Notre Dame didn’t reach the national title game in 2012, which is convenient since Fighting Irish fans have been trying to forget that game ever since it happened.
On the bright side for Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish basketball team beat Northwestern 70-66 to win the Legends Classic. Someone that seems unlikely to soften the blow.
Getting people to agree on college football rankings remains impossible
You might have thought that since only one top-10 team (Louisville) lost last week, this week’s College Football Playoff rankings would be controversy-free. All the top teams would either stay still or slide up one spot and everyone would be happy. Instead, the expected lack of movement in the rankings—Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan and Clemson remained the top-4, in that order—just gave everyone a chance to explore some finer points of evaluating these teams.
The team that prompted the most passionate debate on ESPN was No. 12 USC, which on one hand has three losses but on the other hand has played well in recent weeks since changing quarterbacks. While an alarming faction of the ESPN commentariat thought USC was underrated at No. 12, most smart people seem to agree that the committee would be wrong to disregard the Trojans’ September struggles because, ya know, those games count, too.
USC is a much better team. Trojans are probably a tad lower than I thought. But you can't just forget that September happened.
— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomonCBS) November 23, 2016
A fun part of college football has always been that whole year matters. Why should USC get a pass for throwing away 1/3 of the season?
— Matt Brown (@MattBrownCFB) November 23, 2016
I am perplexed by this USC discussion on the CFP rankings release show. Three losses. Move along.
— Greg Pickel (@GregPickel) November 23, 2016
Meanwhile, the Big Ten could cause a huge headache for everyone involved if Ohio State beats Michigan on Saturday. A Buckeyes win over the Wolverines would likely mean a conference title game featuring Penn State and Wisconsin, with the winner staking a strong claim to a Playoff spot, even as Ohio State watches from home with its own berth essentially locked up. We could potentially see the Buckeyes make the Playoff over the Nittany Lions, who won 24-21 when the teams played head-to-head in October, causing a riot in Western Pennsylvania.
Remember when we thought having a four-team playoff as opposed to just a two-team title game would make for less bickering about who deserves a spot? As it turned out, the Playoff has been a success precisely because it’s allowed for more of that kind of debate. No matter what you think of the current system, it sure makes for a compelling TV show every Tuesday.
We’ve got two more weeks to sort all this out.
Quick hits
– Goodbye Jurgen Klinsmann. We’ll miss you… sort of.
– Bruce Arena will replace Klinsmann. Arena coached the U.S. once before, from 1998-2006.
– The NHL is expanding. Meet the Vegas Golden Knights.
– President Obama handed out some Presidential Medals of Freedom on Wednesday, and honorees included Vin Scully, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and some guy who can’t keep his tear ducts under control.
.@POTUS: Michael Jordan is "more than just an internet meme"; Jordan, crying, *Wait, what?* https://t.co/XPfdDvWtya #MedalofFreedom pic.twitter.com/lYlzSZEHEu
— Jenny Earl (@jenearlyspeakin) November 22, 2016
– Could MLB be headed toward a lockout?
– Long live Nick Young.
Swaggy P steals pass from teammate and hits clutch 3 to give Lakers the lead pic.twitter.com/3TILPxPuU2
— gifdsports (@gifdsports) November 23, 2016
Nick Young's game-winning three has Lakers fans dancing in the Staples Center aisles… pic.twitter.com/RvlGAPKvqb
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) November 23, 2016
– With The Game upcoming, Michigan students spelled out “Fuck OSU” with the lights to their dorm rooms.
– Gucci Mane proposed to his girlfriend at the Atlanta Hawks game, on official Gucci Mane Night. Video-board proposals are generally worthy of eye rolls, but we’ll give this one a pass.
WATCH – @gucci1017 proposes to @KeyshiaKaoir at tonight's game! pic.twitter.com/eWMKseSh6y
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) November 23, 2016
– This story is almost too good to be true. A squirrel in Chicago attacked a local politician who had recently spoken out about the evils of… squirrels.
One final moment of procrastination
Let’s shout out yet another Indiana town…