“Hoosiers” — the story of a small high school winning the state basketball tournament — is the greatest underdog story ever told in Indiana.

Yet even if little Hickory High was an unlikely champion, it wasn’t completely improbable. Jimmy Chitwood’s sweet shooting, after all, was the equivalent of 5-star talent. He grew up on a nearby farm. Even mighty South Bend Central didn’t have an answer for him.

The current Indiana Hoosiers football team – the one that is 10-0 and ranked fifth in the country before a mega matchup that no one saw coming at No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday – has no one as heralded as Chitwood.

IU is a team full of coaches and players that almost no major program wanted; a group that, rather than accepting being ignored by big-school recruiters, worked and worked and worked to prove them wrong — and then received limited interest as possible transfers last year.

One person believed in it, Curt Cignetti, 63itself an ignored asset. Cignetti spent 27 years as an assistant before he was even able to land a Division II head coaching job. He won and won — “Google me” — but he didn’t make it to the Power Four until this year, when IU hired him.

Together, the undervalued coach and his undervalued players fought their way to the Big Ten, albeit at Indiana, whose 712 losses are the most in FBS football history. They arrived primarily from the Sun Belt and Mid-American Conference to be a low-expectation group (picked to finish 17th in the 18-team Big Ten) with chips on their shoulders and a goal in their game.

If they had the chance, they would prove everyone wrong. Ten matches played, mission accomplished.

Hollywood endings are hard to come by in real life – so who knows what happens in Columbus, let alone beyond. THE The Buckeyes are almost two-touchdown favorites for a reason.

The fact that IU was even there, going into a huge top five game in late November with the Big Ten title and College Football Playoffs The stakes at stake are a testament to all that is great about sport.

Recruiting rankings and preseason perception aren’t moving the scoreboard. Struggle, work and self-determination can still prevail.

The Army is America’s Team – literally – as the 9-0 Cadets head into a similar type game Saturday against Notre Dame.

Indiana is something different.

America itself, or at least the promise of what America is supposed to be.

And yet…

“It takes a different mentality as a coach because you’re not building a team, you’re buying a team,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former longtime college head coach, told AL.com on Monday. . “And it was kind of forbidden when I was coaching, but now it’s legal.

“Look at Indiana,” Tuberville continued. “They went and bought them a football team and look where they are.”

Tuberville was denouncing the state of college football with its transfer portal that allows player movement and its name, image and likeness agreements, which he said must carry a significant penalty if broken. He wants to pass laws to fix it.

How the Hoosiers caught a stray animal here is both telling and absurd. In what is undoubtedly another first for the program, a Washington politician is committing to action out of concern about how Indiana football became so good.

There’s a lot to be said for Tuberville, but calling out his hypocrisy as a job-changing coach, or noting that every NIL contract might already have termination provisions, misses the bigger issue.

Someone with Tuberville’s power doesn’t see Indiana’s winning games as a dreamy, value-driven Disney movie in the making, but rather as a serious problem requiring immediate federal regulation.

This is part of how the whole issue of transfers and NIL deals has been framed so retrospectively that senators, even former senator coaches, don’t see the benefits.

They always seem obsessed with wanting to see how things used to be, or amplifying current coaches’ complaints about how difficult their multi-million dollar job is. (It’s certainly not easy being a head coach these days, but every industry changes, and rarely with college football’s soaring salaries.)

Or maybe they didn’t let go of the blatantly false alarmist predictions about how NIL would just “the rich get richer”, or even more ridiculous, that fans would stop watching.

The fact that Curt Cignetti can bring in a lot of new players (to fill the transfer boat) is not a bad thing for college football. That’s a good thing. Overnight, he built a program that had always run under the old rules that favored established brands with greater recruiting advantages.

IU’s quarterback, top four rushers, four of its top five receivers, starting tight end and top four tacklers are all transfers. Given the low-profile programs they came from, it’s laughable to say the Hoosiers “bought” them – unless it was at a dollar store in Indianapolis? Any major program in the country could have done the same. Or they could have hired Cignetti.

Only Indiana has done so.

The beauty of these Hoosiers playing football is the beauty of “Hoosiers”: it allows the improbable to dream. In the past, the only way to get into the top five was to be at a school that had spent decades, even generations, investing in the program so it could build elite recruiting classes. Even then, it had to be located in a fertile recruiting area.

Tuberville understands this part.

Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and so on ran everything. The Indianas of the world hoped to win six games and reach the Fosters Farm Bowl. The sport was completely heavy. Over the past 55 years, Ohio State or Michigan has won at least a share of 42 Big Ten titles.

There was almost nothing anyone could do about it.

Now, apparently, it does. Wonderfully.

The new system offers a multitude of possibilities. The reality is that almost no one can make Ohio State or Alabama State. Anyone can be Indiana. Or Colorado. Or maybe even Ole Miss.

The battle here isn’t just the coaches’ desire for control versus the players’ freedom. It’s also about balancing competition and spreading enthusiasm beyond a small axis of power. Adding to that is the 12-team College Football Playoff.

The three biggest games this weekend include Army, Indiana, BYU and Arizona State. None are traditional winners.

IU, a team of discount coaches and outcast players, will have a chance against the powerful Buckeyes. The new Hoosiers never stopped believing they were good enough, never stopped working to prove it and, thanks to the rule changes, have the opportunity to be their best.

Maybe he lands. Maybe not. But they got there.

It’s a glorious story – a story unique to sports – that should be held up as an ideal, not one that senators can shoot and try to “fix.” The establishment does not need more protections.

After all, the field inside Ohio Stadium is 100 yards long.

They will find exactly the same measure in Bloomington.