Ohio State and Indiana meet up on Saturday at Noon in Memorial Stadium. The Hoosiers are putting their 22-game win streak on the line, while Ohio State is looking to avenge its loss in last year's Big Ten Championship Game.
This is the third consecutive season where the Buckeyes and Hoosiers have met as top 5 teams, and each of the last two has ended with one of these teams hoisting the national championship trophy. This could be the Big Ten's next great rivalry. How often do we get a three-game series this big in the regular season?
The most recent example of this happening involves the greatest rivalry in American sports. Michigan and Ohio State won national titles in 2023 and '24, respectively, and of course met again in 2025. The 2023 game at the Big House is one of the biggest games in the history of the rivalry, but the Wolverines weren't able to live up to their end of the bargain for the next two years, as they lost eight games from 2024-25.
2019 LSU and 2020 Alabama are perhaps the two best offenses in the history of college football. Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, Jaylen Waddle, Devonta Smith, and other NFL stars graced those rosters. LSU, however, was a one-hit wonder.
The 2019 LSU-Alabama game in Tuscaloosa is one of the most legendary games in college football of the 21st century, but the Tigers followed it up with a disastrous 2020 season and fired head coach Ed Orgeron after the 2021 season.
Alabama and Auburn exchanged national titles from 2009-11, but the Tigers were unranked going into the Iron Bowl every year from 2009-2012, other than their national title year in 2010.
Urban Meyer and Nick Saban in their prime going at each other was something to watch. In 2008 and '09, Florida and Alabama met up in the SEC Championship Game as the top two ranked teams in the country. They split those games, and the winner ended up winning the national championship. They followed that up with a top 10 matchup in Tuscaloosa in 2010.
LSU and Florida used to be a protected rivalry in the SEC. These teams traded national titles from 2006-08, as Ohio State fans know all too well. You can take your pick as to which three-game series between these two was the best. In 2006, No. 5 Florida beat No. 9 LSU. In 2007, No. 1 LSU beat No. 9 Florida. In 2008, No. 11 Florida beat No. 4 LSU. The home team won each game and then went on to win the national title. They followed that up in 2009 with No. 1 Florida beating No. 4 LSU in Baton Rouge.
Those are all of the examples in the post-poll era, but they aren't the only ones. The Miami-Notre Dame rivalry in the late 1980s was the biggest thing going in college football. In '87, Miami shut out Notre Dame in a top 10 matchup at home.
The next year they went to South Bend and lost to the Irish 31-30 in the famous "Catholics vs. Convicts" game. Then the Hurricanes knocked off No. 1 Notre Dame in the final game of the 1989 regular season to steal a title away from the Irish, and then went back to South Bend in '90 and beat them in another top 10 matchup.
Georgia and Clemson used to be a yearly rivalry, despite those programs being in separate conferences. The Bulldogs beat an unranked Clemson team on the way to the title in 1980, and then Clemson upset the defending champs at home in '81 on their way to a national title. The only matchup of ranked teams in that series was in 1982, when No. 7 Georgia beat No. 11 Clemson in Athens to open the season.
It's a shame that the USC-Notre Dame rivalry has gone away with all of the history it has, particularly from the late 1970s. Notre Dame blew out the fifth-ranked Trojans on their way to a national title. The next year, USC got its revenge in the Coliseum in a top-10 matchup on its way to a title, and then asserted dominance over the tenth-ranked Irish in their own stadium in 1979 as USC finished just short of back-to-back titles.
Pitt and Notre Dame met up to open the 1976 and '77 seasons with both teams ranked in the top 11. In '76, the Panthers won in South Bend and ended up as national champions. In '77, the Fighting Irish went into Pittsburgh and won on their way to the title. The '78 game didn't pull through as far as the hype, as Notre Dame was unranked going in, but they were able to upset No. 9 Pitt.
These are all the series with similar stakes from the last 50 years. If you want to go back further than that, you can look at Notre Dame-USC from 1973-75, Notre Dame-USC from 1966-68, Michigan State-Notre Dame 1965-67, Arkansas-Texas 1963-65, Iowa-Ohio State 1957-59, a five-game series of Army-Notre Dame 1943-47, and TCU-Texas A&M 1938-40.
Those are all of the examples of this in the AP Poll era (since 1936). Of course, this used to happen more often before the BCS, when there were sometimes multiple national champions in one year.
In 2024, undefeated, fifth-ranked Indiana came into the Horseshoe and got blown out by No. 2 Ohio State, and the Buckeyes went on to win the national title. In 2025, these two teams met as the top two teams in the country in the Big Ten Championship Game. Indiana won 13-10 and went on to win the first national title in program history.
Now, in 2026, No. 4 Ohio State goes into Bloomington to take on No. 5 Indiana. It's the first time in college football history that two teams have played three straight times outside of the playoff, with both teams ranked inside the top 5, in three different stadiums.
No Big Ten rivalry has ever seen a series like this. Not even Ohio State and Michigan. This is one of, if not the, game of the year in college football, and the biggest game in the history of Bloomington, Indiana. Let's enjoy it on Saturday afternoon.
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