Start with historical futility when searching for “the Indiana of 2025,” because that’s what separates a garden variety “surprise team” from the Curt Cignetti-coached “What the …” Hoosiers of 2024.

“What the …” should be the first two words uttered at the thought of the team in question landing a spot in the College Football Playoff, because that team represents one of the consistently worst-performing programs among Power 4 membership. Anything shy of that, and we simply don’t have an “Indiana of 2025.”

Most years, we won’t have one. We won’t have a team with the most losses in college football history (714 by their count, as buried on page 18 of the IU football record book) and the worst winning percentage in its conference history going 11-1 in the regular season and getting into the 12-team field. We won’t have a team with a traditional identity of laughingstock forcing people to take that team seriously. That’s what made 2024 Indiana extraordinary.

We might have another team coming off a three-win season, picked to do nothing and flipping that around to 11 wins. But Indiana (No. 81 in Chris Vannini’s preseason ranking of 134 teams in 2024) wasn’t even the only team that pulled that off in 2024. Arizona State (No. 89 entering the season per Vannini) did the exact same thing, getting its 11th win in the Big 12 title game against Iowa State and then coming oh so close to its 12th win in a double-overtime Peach Bowl quarterfinal loss to Texas.

A new coach, a new quarterback, a host of transfers having a transformative effect on a roster — these were characteristics of the 2024 Hoosiers as well. So was a favorable schedule — just ask any SEC coach — but that’s another problem with trying to identify an “Indiana of 2025” before the season. Michigan (preseason No. 8) and Washington (No. 39), national title game combatants to finish the 2023 season, were not expected to fall off as dramatically as they did in 2024. That schedule looked a lot different in October than it did in August.

A bad season in 2024. Zero expectations for 2025. Wholesale changes. All these things can make a prospective “Indiana of 2025” more closely resemble Indiana of 2024. But none of them matter without the most important prerequisite, which can only be earned with decades and decades of failure.

(By the way, for the folks out there touting Illinois or South Carolina or other teams likely to end up in the preseason top-25 rankings as “the next Indiana,” why not just go with Alabama?)

The pool of candidates must come from a select group, so let’s set the bar here: The Indiana of 2025 must be among the Power 4 programs that have done enough to place in the top 10 of most college football losses of all time. Elite results for an elite pursuit. That leaves us with fellow Big Ten bruisers Northwestern and Rutgers; Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State from the Big 12; Wake Forest from the ACC; and, of course, Vanderbilt from the SEC.

Let’s start by dispatching the Big 12 trio. Kansas State, in particular, has completely changed the identity of its program over the past 30 years, owing most of that to former coach Bill Snyder. Successor Chris Klieman has a team ranked No. 20 in the preseason coaches poll, led by quarterback Avery Johnson. Iowa State has done a ton of image rehab in this century as well, and oddsmakers have Matt Campbell’s Cyclones (tied for No. 21 in the coaches poll) with an over/under of 7.5 wins this season, preparing to take on the Wildcats in an enormous Week 0 opener in Dublin, Ireland.

Kansas remains a basketball school with a mostly bleak history, but coach Lance Leipold almost had the “Indiana of 2023” before we knew about the Indiana of 2024, with a Jayhawks team that finished 9-4. This season, he has Jalon Daniels back for a sixth season at quarterback — he will end up with starts in all six seasons — and an over/under of 7.5 wins. Preseason expectations are too high for Kansas to qualify.

Once we clear the history bar, we need to confine this to teams with an over/under of 5.5 victories or lower. That’s where Indiana’s expectations were set a year ago, and that gives us a final four. Except I’m bouncing Vanderbilt too.

Yes, a Vanderbilt football team is too highly regarded to qualify as a potential Earth-shaking darling of the sport in 2025. The Commodores already achieved that status in 2024, going 7-6 with a win over Alabama that arguably provided a larger one-day dose of shock and awe than Indiana accumulated over four months of football.

Las Vegas has Vanderbilt at a 5.5 on the over/under, but that’s actually a fair amount of respect given the schedule. A trip to Virginia Tech is tough, especially considering the revenge factor, and the SEC slate is as follows: at South Carolina, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee; home vs. LSU, Missouri, Auburn and Kentucky. It’s hard to imagine this schedule being vastly easier in real life than it appears on paper and giving Clark Lea’s Commodores a chance to pull an Indiana.

Demond Claiborne rushed for 1,049 yards in 2024. (Neville E. Guard / Imagn Images)

And it’s hard to name 10 college football players who have achieved more celebrity to this point than Vanderbilt super senior quarterback Diego Pavia. Try it real fast.

So that leaves three — Rutgers (5.5 over/under), Wake Forest (4.5) and Northwestern (3.5). Rutgers has more than earned its spot among the dregs of the sport since participating in the first intercollegiate football game in 1869. Greg Schiano is just 26-34 in his second stint at the school. But he did just follow up a 7-6 season with a 7-6 season. Also, a schedule that includes Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon and Illinois would appear prohibitive.

Make it a party of two? Northwestern, returning David Braun as head coach after a 4-8 second season and featuring SMU transfer Preston Stone at quarterback, has it a bit easier with no Buckeyes on the schedule. But Big Ten title contenders Penn State and Oregon are on the schedule, plus Michigan (at Wrigley Field) and trips to Nebraska, USC and Illinois.

Wake Forest is the one. Wake checks the most 2024 Indiana boxes. A first-year coach in Jake Dickert. A transfer quarterback (Robby Ashford, formerly of South Carolina, Auburn and Oregon, is battling Charlotte transfer Deshawn Purdie, who originally committed to Florida out of the transfer portal). A giant class of transfers (35, compared with 31 for Indiana last year). And a schedule that actually might help.

The nonleague slate is Indiana-level soft, Clemson, Miami and Louisville don’t appear, and SMU, Georgia Tech and North Carolina come to Winston-Salem. I’ve got the Demon Deacons surprising at 6-6, which is about what I expected of Indiana entering last season. So, reserve one of those dozen Playoff spots for them.

That is, if there isn’t too much backlash from the discourse around Indiana of 2024 to prevent an Indiana of 2025 or any other year. SEC coaches are doing their part. So is Cignetti, strangely enough. Along with joining the other Stepford — er, Big Ten — coaches in supporting commissioner Tony Petitti’s absurd plan for Playoff expansion, he’s needlessly dropping Virginia from his own schedule and taking shots at the SEC as cover.

All of it could work against Indiana in future selection committee considerations. It could work against any team that ends up with a gaudy record on the back of an iffy schedule. And it was already going to be unlikely to find another Indiana of 2024.

But at least it’s possible. Back in the four-team days, 2024 Indiana gets a nicer bowl game than usual. Thank you, 12-team Playoff. You are the 2024 Indiana of Playoff formats: better than expected, legitimately good, unfairly disrespected and destined to be a historical footnote.

(Top photo of Curt Cignetti: Trevor Ruszkowski / Imagn Images)