Indiana's winning percentage since they built their IPF is .336: 93 wins and 184 losses. Ours is .463: 118 wins and 137 losses. So the IPF, while convenient, doesn't seem to have been all that critical.
I would suggest national TV blow-outs have a bigger impact, at least if you are trying to maintain your reputation as a national power.
Steve - As you may or may not know, I attended IU. I have a relationship with the school. It would take hours to explain the history of IU Football - why the Program is what it is and has been where it has been. I suspect that you have no real understanding of what is probably, from a statistical standpoint, the worst performing football program in NCAA history.
I am certain, based upon what I know, that Syracuse University does not have - and never has had - the kind of limitations that have negatively impacted IU Football.
For that reason, the effort to compare the programs in the way you have sought to do is not valid in my opinion.
What I don't think you understand - and could not be expected to understand - is that we could build a "Taj Mahal" football facility in Bloomington, and it would make little difference in the success of the Program. There are just too many other factors that have blunted the impact of the vast amount of money that has been spent on the program.
The Syracuse Football experience has been quite different than the IU Football experience. Jim Brown at IU? Ernie Davis at IU? Don McNabb at IU? No. Our stars at IU have been guys like Tom Nowatzke, Harry Gonso, Joe Norman and Anthony Thompson.
And yet the IU Program - as bad as it has always been - has been far better funded than the Syracuse Program.
I know for a fact that the lack of funding for the Syracuse Program had a direct impact on recruiting starting during the McNabb years.
No weight room. No indoor facility. An insufficient training room. AstroTurf. Insufficient funding of the coaching staff. (I was there in 2011 when Doug Marrone made it very clear that at that point the Program was dead last in the Big East in terms of football infrastructure. I remember him complaining that we didn't even have basic training room facilities that were desperately needed.)
All of that - and the rise of other programs such as Rutgers, UConn and Pitt - led to a reduction in talent - and a less competitive team in 2004.
The 51-0 loss at Purdue - I was there and had to live through that - was the product of a lack of talent.
And, yet, at the end of the 2004 season at the BC game - I was there and rejoiced with the rest of the SU fans in the stadium - the Purdue game was a distant memory - it had no impact that day. That 2004 season was I believe the coaching staff's shining moment. It took a depleted team to a co-championship and a bowl game - it gave FSU a game to the very end. And it was fired because too many folks had no real understanding of the Syracuse Football Program. And we have paid for that misunderstanding for more than a decade.
I could go through my media guides and come up with winning scores that would bury the scores you picked out in preparing your post.
But that would be a futile exercise in my opinion - because the scores of the games are the rabbits. Money - funding - is the elephant that best explains what happened to Syracuse Football.
And that has to do with a lot of things the most important of which, really, is the complete lack of football tradition at the school.
The fact is that for years very few have cared all that much about football at IU.
So,
Trust me, there really is no comparison between the two schools when it comes to football.
And for that reason, even the
