Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (family reunions sold separately in Missoula, where Montana Grizzlies linebacker Cooper Barnum celebrated Senior Day by beating his father, Bruce, who is the head coach of the Portland State Vikings). First Quarter: Paths to the Playoff. Second Quarter: Winning the Staffing Battle. Third Quarter: Conference Coaches of the Year.
Fourth Quarter: Two Teams Are Having Dream Seasons. Here Come the Dream Killers.
These are the best of times, ever, for the Indiana Hoosiers (31). The eternal Big Ten doormat is 10–0 for the first time ever, playing November games of unprecedented wattage, trying to go where no IU team has ever gone before—to the College Football Playoff. They have a 63-year-old coach who just this year has gotten his first shot at a high-major job, and has crushed it. This is the feel-good story of the 2024 season.
Unless, of course, that story is the Army Black Knights (32). They’re 9–0 and ranked No. 16 in the AP poll, their highest ranking since 1962. The absolute antithesis of all things modern college football—the transfer portal, NIL deals, spread-and-throw offense—they are succeeding anyway. There is no conventional reason why they should be able to compete in 2024, yet here they are. They are the ultimate counterprogramming: an old-school option coach is leading a collection of lightly recruited players who are destined to go pro in military service after graduation.
These two unbelievable seasons are on parallel tracks. Nobody saw it coming, but nobody can objectively deny their week-to-week dominance. Indiana has trailed just twice all season, both in the first half, while winning every game but one by at least two touchdowns. Army has trailed just once all season, briefly in the first half, and has won every game by double digits. Yet both have been doubted and dismissed for allegedly not having played anybody.
Well, here come the somebodies. Two Goliath programs now stand in David’s path. For these dream seasons to maintain course, they must defeat dream killers Saturday.
The No. 2-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes (33) and their $20 million roster loom in front of Indiana, with more than 100,000 fans arrayed in their Death Star stadium to inflict discomfort upon the Hoosiers. The two Big Ten programs have played 97 times and Indiana has won just 12, the last coming in 1988. Since then the series is a one-way, scarlet-and-gray speedway: 30–0–1 in favor of the Buckeyes, most of them blowouts. Ohio State is favored by 13 this time, per DraftKings.
Meanwhile, the No. 6-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish (34) threaten to do the most un-patriotic thing by derailing Army’s perfect season. They already bounced Navy from the unbeaten ranks last month, and now take aim at another service academy. The Irish are history’s most glam program, with a worldwide following and their own network and Most Favored Nation in a power conference they don’t even have to join as a football member. And while they haven’t played Army often in recent years, they have dominated the series (39–8–4 all-time). The Irish haven’t lost to the Black Knights since 1958, winning 15 in a row, just one of those by less than two touchdowns. Notre Dame is favored by 14, per DraftKings.
You could hardly assign two bigger overdogs the job of ruining good underdog stories.
The Notre Dame-Army game is also freighted with incredible locational history. The game is being played in New York, where lore and legend were spawned when the two teams have met.
This is the 100th anniversary of the “Four Horsemen” game, played Oct. 18, 1924, at the Polo Grounds. Notre Dame defeated Army 13–7, an outcome that moved famed sports writer Grantland Rice to author the most famous lede in the history of his college football chronicling:
“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen (35) rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.”
Never a place to miss a publicity opportunity, Notre Dame got the four players memorialized by Rice—Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley and Elmer Layden—on horseback for a soon-to-be iconic photo. Coached by Knute Rockne, the Irish were becoming a national sensation in the 1920s. That game helped finish the job—the Irish went 10–0 and won the Rose Bowl, their first-ever bowl game, and later were awarded several retroactive national championships.
Four years later, trailing favored Army at halftime in Yankee Stadium, Rockne delivered his famed “Win one for The Gipper (36)” halftime speech. Rockne urged his team to honor the memory of the late Irish star George Gipp—invoking a possibly apocryphal story from Gipp’s death bed. Notre Dame won the game 12–6, and the scene was memorialized by Hollywood in the movie Knute Rockne, All-American.
Notre Dame was the marquee college football program through 1930, when Rockne died in a plane crash. Layden, one of the Horsemen, restored the luster when he took over as head coach in '34, and then Frank Leahy took the program back to the apex in the '40s.
In five straight meetings from 1943 to ’47, either Notre Dame or Army was ranked No. 1 when they played—and every meeting was in Yankee Stadium, as this one will be.
The No. 1 Irish beat the No. 3 Black Knights 26–7 in 1943, on the way to their first AP national title. Army destroyed Notre Dame the next two seasons by a combined score of 107–0, with loaded World War II-era teams led by Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside (37), Felix “Doc” Blanchard and Glenn Davis. Army won the AP national title both of those seasons, with Blanchard winning the Heisman Trophy in ’45 and Davis in ’46.
The 1946 game was the original “Game of the Century,” a breathlessly anticipated matchup of No. 1 Army and No. 2 Notre Dame that ended in a scoreless tie. It was the only blemish for either team, and the Irish wound up winning the title. Notre Dame repeated the following year, beating Army 27–7.
The two programs stopped playing every year after 1958, Army’s last victory in the series. But they’d stored up enough history to make this resumption in Yankee Stadium special … and that was before Army decided to have its best season in decades.
Can either the Black Knights or Hoosiers keep their dream runs going? The oddsmakers don’t think so. But both have had an extra week advantage in preparation over Notre Dame and Ohio State, and at this point, they might have forgotten what losing even feels like. Dismiss them at your peril.
Coach Who Earned His Comp Car This Week
Fran Brown (38), Syracuse Orange. The rookie head coach improved to 7–3 with an upset win at California, presumably earning the right to take a shower. Brown made headlines last week when he said he is so despondent after losses that he does not take showers, because he hasn’t earned it. “Winners get washed,” he memorably declared. Hopefully Brown got his washing after this win.
Coach Who Should Take the Bus to Work
Jeff Brohm (39), Louisville Cardinals. Five times as the head coach of the Purdue Boilermakers and at Louisville, Brohm has upset a ranked team. And five times, his team has lost its next game. The hangover from dominating Clemson on the road Nov. 2 was big enough to last two weeks, through an open date—Louisville gave up 17 points in the final seven minutes to lose to 2–7 Stanford on Saturday, 38–35. That bare fact is bad enough, but the way the Cardinals gave up the winning field goal was especially bleak—a Hail Mary pass from near midfield fell incomplete with time on the clock, allowing Stanford to take over with good field position with four seconds left. Then Louisville committed two penalties—the first a personal foul that allowed Stanford to set up for a 57-yard field goal, then an offsides that moved it to 52 yards. Kicker Emmet Kenney drilled it for the win, and the worst loss of Brohm’s largely successful 24-game tenure at his alma mater.
Point After
When thirsty in the football mecca of Atlanta, The Dash recommends a couple of beers from Monday Night Brewing, which has outlets around the South. Try an aggressively named Death Raptor IPA (40) or a Drafty Kilt scotch ale and thank The Dash later.
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-GAMBLER.
More College Football on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Forde-Yard Dash: Army, Indiana Try to Avoid Perfect-Season Spoilers in Week 13.
