This is the season when the punchlines punched back. 

Louisville, which scored the upset of then-No. 2 Miami that allowed Indiana to rise in the poll, jumped into the rankings for the first time this season at No. 19.

No Big Ten program had lost more games. None had won fewer. Memorial Stadium was a mausoleum. 

Curt Cignetti, the hottest name in college football coaching, isn’t going anywhere.

Curt Cignetti is 64 years old. That's not a punchline. It's not a caveat. It's a challenge to everything we think we know about success.

Coming off an impressive 30-20 win over No. 3 Oregon in Eugene, the Indiana University football program climbed four spots in the most recent Associated Press Top 25, to No. 3 nationally.

This column is late because I’ve been staring at a blank screen trying to come up with a comparison that fits what Indiana football just did.

It's kind of a strange day in college football in these parts.

Cignetti doesn’t need to convince anyone how good Oregon is. But in the space between “They’re a very good football team” and “We’re a good football team” lies decades of bad football.