OHIO STATE MOCKS CURT CIGNETTI AND CARRIES ON TO CHAMPIONSHIP DREAMS

Let’s concentrate on the best teams in a wild, quirky college football season — Oregon and the Buckeyes — and see who survives after the Big Ten title game while Indiana and other hopefuls fade out

     He did not toss a chair. He did not hit a cop. He did not hurl a player into a seat. In his first and only loss thus far as Indiana’s football coach, Curt Cignetti did not resurrect Bob Knight. Maybe he could have slammed Ohio State’s quarterback, Will Howard, for shouting “Google that” on the sideline and stubbing a cigarette. Those were Cignetti potshots.

     “I just try to say we don't listen to the stuff on social media, but we hear it, man,” Howard said. “I was just having some fun with it. I have a lot of respect for those guys, man. What coach Cignetti has done over there, he's done a heck of a job. The Buckeyes are here and the Buckeyes won. You can Google that.”

     Instead, all Cignetti wanted was to pose a question to the College Football Playoff selection committee. Someone asked if the Hoosiers, after a 38-15 loss, still deserve a place in the 12-team national postseason. “Is that a serious question?” he said Saturday. “I’m not even going to answer that one. The answer is so obvious.”

     Is it? With an ear-splitting failure in Columbus on a schedule with too many flim-flam opponents, there’s no guarantee that Indiana qualifies as a fourth team from the Big Ten. This is where commissioner Tony Petitti launches a public battle with SEC boss Greg Sankey, with bellowing from the ACC, the Big 12 and Group of 5 something Boise State. Ole Miss lost to Florida and Brigham Young lost to Arizona State, which should give life to Cignetti — even after the Sun Devils threw a celebration ball into the stands with one second remaining and created a laughable Hail Mary for BYU. But Tennessee won 56-0, meaning the Volunteers could squeeze into the bracket as an SEC team. Colorado lost to Kansas — chill out on Coach Prime and his defense, as Travis Hunter wins the Heisman Trophy. Yet SMU might land as the ACC champion nowhere near the Atlantic coast.

     So, what’s obvious here? Before the game, Cignetti said, “There’s a narrative out there that’s created a chip for us. People can stick their narrative up their you know what.” No one is sticking it anywhere but Bloomington. At this point, he’s trying to finish the season with a victory over Purdue, which has won five of the last six games against the Hoosiers. And the rest of us know that Ohio State, with a victory over Michigan next week, will play Oregon in the Big Ten championship game.

     Those are the best two teams in the country. Texas is No. 3, while I still like Georgia (why?) and Arizona State has party-mad fans who wouldn’t leave the field for 20 minutes. Everyone else is secondary, including Indiana, which dealt with a last-minute touchdown that pushed Ryan Day’s victory margin to 23 points. The Ohio State coach, always under extraordinary pressure, was aware of Cignetti’s comment when he accepted the Indiana job: “Purdue sucks … so does Michigan and Ohio State.”

     Not really when the Buckeyes, in talent evaluations, have 14 five-star players and 55 four-star players. Indiana has zero five-star players and 10 four-star players. Consider it the latest NIL advancement. “We said leave no doubt,” Day said. “Our guys just played with a chip today, and that’s the way you play the game of football. We wanted to finish it the right way and make sure that everybody knows that this is The Ohio State Buckeyes.”

     Well, The Ohio State Buckeyes lost to Oregon in Eugene. Are they ready to rebound and finally win a national championship while preserving Day’s job position? Until then, we weep for Cignetti, who couldn’t bring John Mellencamp to pregame activities at the Horseshoe when Ohio State landed the Akron natives, the Black Keys.

     “In life, all good things come to an end,” Cignetti said. “We couldn't protect the quarterback. Every time we dropped back to pass, something bad happened. It was like a nightmare. We didn't handle the noise very well. We didn't play our best game today. But I think a big part of that was because of them.”

     Let’s start focusing on the finest teams. The first round of the tournament will be refreshing stuff, at four campus stadiums, before we move to the quarterfinals and semifinals at bowl sites. The title game will be played on Inauguration Day. The presidential election was much simpler than college football.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.