Too Early Top 25s Don’t Demonstrate Faith In Indiana Football Repeat In 2025

Despite several key players returning from a historic 2024 season, the “too early” predictions don’t expect Indiana to reach its 2024 heights.

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti holds his arms out during the first round of the College Football Playoff between Notre Dame and Indiana at Notre Dame Stadium on Friday, Dec. 20, 2024, in South Bend. | MICHAEL CLUBB/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – There is nothing that Indiana football likes more than to be underestimated. The Hoosiers practically ran on that fuel throughout their historic 11-2 College Football Playoff-qualifying season.

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti is a wagon-circler who looks for slights and tries to exploit them for his team’s benefit. Us against the world is a unifying bond in the Indiana locker room.

If Cignetti wants to go that route again for motivation, he’s already received his share of bulletin board material from the national college football media.

With the 2024 college football season in the books after Ohio State’s 34-23 College Football Playoff championship game triumph over Notre Dame on Monday, most college football media outlets turned their attention to the 2025 campaign with their “too early” top 25 predictions.

Hoosiers on SI took a look at 10 “too early” top 25s from several national outlets.

None of them predict Indiana to finish as high as the No. 10 spot the Hoosiers earned in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll. Barring weird circumstances, none of them predict a College Football Playoff repeat for the Hoosiers, either.

Indiana’s average ranking in the 10 “too early” predictions chosen is 20.5. The Hoosiers were ranked in the top 25 of eight polls and were left unranked by two of them – Brett McMurphy of Action Network and in the USA Today prediction.

(For the purposes of creating an average, being unranked in a poll was given a value of 26.)

Indiana’s highest “too early” ranking was a No. 14 spot in the Pro Football Focus prediction.

Indiana finished in a tie for second in the Big Ten in 2024, ahead of national champion Ohio State. But prognosticators are skeptical about a repeat performance from the Hoosiers.

Every “too early” top 25 had Ohio State, Penn State and Oregon ahead of Indiana.

Nine out of 10 of them had Illinois ahead of the Hoosiers. The Fighting Illini finished 10-3 and defeated South Carolina 21-17 in the Citrus Bowl. Most of the Illini’s primary contributors return in 2025.

Five of them had Michigan in front of Indiana. USA Today had Nebraska in its top 25 instead of Indiana.

Too Early Top 25 Predictions

School	SI.com	ESPN	CBS	NCAA,com	PFF.com	Yahoo	Action Network	Bleacher Report	USA Today	Sporting News	Average Ranking
Indiana	23	17	23	19	14	16	unranked	21	unranked	20	20.5
Ohio State	2	1	4	2	3	2	1	2	1	2	2
Penn State	3	3	5	3	4	4	3	4	4	4	3.7
Oregon	5	6	7	6	2	3	6	5	11	5	5.6
Illinois	9	13	15	13	unranked	12	12	15	13	13	14.1
Michigan	19	21	unranked	23	25	unranked	17	18	18	18	21.1
Nebraska	unranked	unranked	unranked	unranked	unranked	unranked	unranked	unranked	22	unranked	unranked

Indiana returns standouts on both sides of the ball. Wide receivers Elijah Sarratt and Omar Cooper Jr. return as well as three-fifths of the offensive line, assuming left guard Drew Evans is healthy.

Added to that crew is California transfer quarterback Fernando Mendoza, Maryland running back Roman Hemby, Michigan wide receiver Tyler Morris, Wisconsin tight end Riley Nowakowski, Tennessee tight end Holden Staes, Ohio State offensive lineman Zen Michalski and Colorado offensive lineman Kahlil Benson, a former Hoosier, among others.

Nearly all of Indiana’s key defensive players return, including foundational pieces in defensive end Mikail Kamara, linebacker Aiden Fisher and cornerback D’Angelo Ponds.

Part of the skepticism regarding Indiana might be in the human nature of seeing whether a surprise team can repeat the feat, but it also might be rooted in a more difficult Big Ten schedule for Indiana in 2025.

Of the teams picked ahead of Indiana in the “too early” predictions, the Hoosiers play three of them in 2025 – Penn State, Oregon and Illinois. The Penn State and Oregon games are on the road.

Illinois comes to Bloomington for the Big Ten opener on Sept. 20. Indiana also has a challenging road game at Iowa the following week.

The combined 2024 Big Ten record of the teams Indiana will face in 2025 is 39-35, though of course, many teams will have different personnel next season.

Related stories on Indiana football

• INDIANA FINISHES IN NO. 10 SPOT: Indiana was ranked No. 10 in the final AP football poll for the 2024 season. CLICK HERE.

• CIGNETTI PLANS FOR MENDOZA: Curt Cignetti talked about his plans for incoming transfer quarterback Fernando Mendoza. CLICK HERE.

• TRANSFER PORTAL TRACKER: See which football players Indiana has added and what players departed via the transfer portal. CLICK HERE.