Smokey made Craig feel even worse about getting fired on his day off. Curt Cignetti can now relate.
On Tuesday, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee dropped the defending champion Indiana Hoosiers from their lofty previous ranking of fourth to ninth. To add insult to injury, the Hoosiers didn’t even play last weekend.
“Indiana was probably the victim of having a bye week at the wrong time, a time where there were seven games within our top 25,” said CFP chairman Hunter Yurachek, via 247Sports. “Some of those big wins occurred right around where they were, starting with Notre Dame’s big win over Miami, Texas over Missouri, UCLA win on the road and beat a Minnesota team, a Minnesota team that had gone to Indiana the week prior. Indiana needed a 60-yard field goal as time expired to send that game into overtime and win that game.”
Yurachek added, “Every team that Indiana played, had played to date in the Big Ten, they all lost. So the six losses that went against their record strength as well as their strength of schedule. Those metrics affected the committee’s review of Indiana this week as well,”
Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti, who wasn’t buying Yurachek’s explanation, took to social media to clown the committee for their decision.
“Bad losses don’t count anymore?” he wrote on X on Thursday. “Are first downs still 10 yards?”
Reading the post, it’s not evidently clear what Cignetti is referring to.
The only teams ranked ahead of Indiana that have “bad losses” are the Texas Longhorns and the Georgia Bulldogs. However, in both of those cases, those teams have multiple wins that are infinitely more impressive than anything the Hoosiers have accomplished this year.
In any event, Cignetti and the Hoosiers will have an opportunity to get back in the top 5 (maybe) this weekend when they host the 18th-ranked USC Trojans.
