Could the Current Indiana Hoosiers beat the 2019 LSU Tigers
The 2019 LSU Tigers are often regarded as the best college football team of all time. The Tigers went undefeated in the regular season, making prominent teams at the time like Oklahoma and UGA look like little league players. At the head of all of this was their quarterback, who seemed to have come out of nowhere, Joe Burrow. Burrow had a historic Heisman season that year, breaking NCAA records in passing touchdowns and passing yards. He had support, though, with superstars like Ja’Marr Chase, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, and Grant Delpit.
But in this modern age, a new team with a similar DNA has emerged, and along with it, I present a question: Could the current Indiana Hoosiers beat the 2019 LSU Tigers? Let’s take a look.
First, I would obviously compare Joe Burrow to the reigning Heisman winner, Fernando Mendoza. Much like Burrow, Mendoza seemed to have appeared out of thin air and raised this Indiana team from the dead. He also led the Hoosiers to an undefeated season, and they will play for a national championship this year. However, I was interested to find that his stats pale in comparison to Burrow’s. Mendoza threw for 2,691 fewer yards, passed fewer than half of the touchdowns Burrow did, and his completion rate is 5% lower.
In regard to his team, Mendoza’s main targets are Omar Cooper Jr. and Roman Hemby. The defensive support is coming from players like Aiden Fisher and Hosea Wheeler. Omar Cooper Jr. has 866 receiving yards in comparison to Ja’Marr Chase’s 1,780. Clyde Edwards-Helaire rushed for 1,414 yards versus Roman Hemby’s 1,060. This is not in any way an attempt to trash the Hoosiers, but more an insight into just how good the 2019 LSU Tigers really were.
The Hoosiers are absolutely unrivaled in college football right now. They have beaten both of their playoff opponents by more than thirty points. The only close game they have played all season was against Penn State, which they beat by a field goal. Fernando Mendoza and his team are simply a class above the rest right now, and no program has figured out how to stop them.
While I don’t believe they could have beaten the 2019 Tigers, it is still fun to look back on historic seasons in sports and compare the talent through the different eras. However, there is one thing these two teams have in common that I believe is the recipe to their success. Coach O and Coach Curt Cignetti value age and experience over stars. This Indiana team was the only football team in the Semi-Finals to not have any 5-star players.
Oftentimes in this new age of college football, coaches are fighting for the most promising prospects. They want young, flashy, and sometimes flaky athletes. Athletes can be paid and leveraged to go where they need to in order to let the head coach keep their job and money coming into the program. LSU had no choice at the time since NIL was not yet what it is today, but I heavily admire Cignetti for prioritizing, in his own words, “production over potential.”
It is evident in the cohesiveness with which the Hoosiers play and the care their coaches display that this is a team that has been developed together to win and lose as a unit. In this modern era, so many players are trying to increase their personal stock and get the most out of college sports financially as they can. I foresee more coaches starting to share values with Cignetti, and this might help heal the sport a bit more.