LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — College football has always had a velvet rope.
It isn't enough to win. You have to belong.
The bouncer at the door wears no uniform. Sometimes he wears a headset. Sometimes he carries a whistle. This week he apparently filled out a preseason coaches poll.
And when Indiana walked up with a national championship trophy tucked under one arm, he glanced at it politely and said, "Very nice. ID, please."
The Hoosiers are the defending national champions and coming off a 16-0 season in which they produced eight NFL Draft picks, including Heisman winner and No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza.
Fourteen coaches voted them the best team in America. The poll ranked them sixth.
Now, before college fans start firing away at me on social media, sixth isn't ridiculous.
Ohio State has a Heisman candidate quarterback. Oregon is loaded. Georgia recruits football players the way Costco stocks paper towels. Texas and Notre Dame have every reason to believe they're championship teams, too.
You can make a perfectly reasonable argument for all five. That's not the funny part.
The funny part is that it's the only election I know of where second in first-place votes earns sixth place overall.
Fourteen coaches looked at Indiana and saw "best team in the country." A bunch of others looked at the Hoosiers like a banker looks at a lottery winner: “That’s great. Now do it again.”
The poll isn't telling us where Indiana belongs. It's telling us nobody agrees what Indiana is. A one-year wonder? A defending champion replacing a Heisman Trophy quarterback? Or college football's newest heavyweight?
In this poll, the coaches checked all three boxes.
College football, we know, trusts history almost as much as it trusts talent. Programs with familiar letter jackets get the benefit of the doubt. They lose stars and we nod knowingly. "They'll reload."
New money has to keep bringing bank statements.
Indiana is somewhere in between.
It has already won the biggest prize the sport offers. It is still auditioning for permanent membership.
Which brings us, oddly enough, to Louisville.
Jeff Brohm's Cardinals were picked third in the ACC by the people who spend every fall watching the league.
But nationally they're 26th. Five points behind Missouri and looking up at a Clemson team that just finished 7-6.
That's not an outrage. It's another reminder that respect doesn't arrive overnight or always reward consistency. Louisville is paying for losses to Cal and Clemson last year, and maybe it should.
The hardest thing in college football isn't climbing to the top. It's convincing everybody you'll still be there next year.
Indiana gets another chance to prove it. Louisville gets another chance to join the conversation.
And the bouncer isn't going anywhere. Turns out, it takes more than one national championship to get a nod and a stamp at the door.
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