Ohio State whips Iowa, sends message to Indiana: We're coming - USA Today
The story isn’t Jeremiah Smith and the Heisman Trophy. It’s much bigger than that.
This was a message from Ohio State, sent across the six-hour drive southeast, through the rows of corn and soybean fields of Iowa and Illinois, and directly into Bloomington, Ind.
Ohio State may have blown the Texas game, but it’s about to get real for the defending national champion Hoosiers. Quickly.
Ohio State did Saturday what Ohio State does under coach Ryan Day: dispatches the outmanned and moves on. Unless it’s Michigan on the other sideline, the Buckeyes under Day are nearly flawless in games as a prohibitive favorite.
“There were a lot of good things out there,” Day said.
They all look the same in these games, these moments where the underdog feels it and Ohio State shows it. Get a big lead with the best roster, then salt it away with backups that could start for the poor saps on the other sideline taking the beating.
But this one was a wide-eyed statement for Indiana, which has fooled around for the first month of the season with one of the worst nonconference schedules in college football, and Northwestern and Rutgers.
By the time Ohio State arrives in Bloomington on Oct. 17, Indiana will have added Nebraska to the list of nobodies and will have won 33 of 35 games under white-hot coach Curt Cignetti.
No team has played Indiana better in the past two and half seasons, no team has pressed the Hoosiers quite like Ohio State. There was the blowout in 2024, the welcome to the big-time moment for then-unbeaten Indiana in Cignetti’s first season.
And there was the payback in 2025, IU’s 13-10 victory over the Buckeyes in the Big Ten championship game — a game Ohio State had numerous opportunities to win.
The convoluted 4th-and-1 call at the Indiana 5 late in the third quarter, the missed 27-yard field goal after yet another botched chance to score — after an 18-play drive.
Ohio State thought it would get another shot at Indiana in the College Football Playoff, while defending its national championship. It never got there after losing to Miami in the quarterfinals.
They’ve waited 11 long months for this rematch, for the opportunity to play at Indiana and get some payback. To go on the road in a wild environment, and suck the life out of the stadium.
It’s what Ohio State does, just like it did against Iowa. Like it does just about any other time and place against an opponent not named Michigan.
They toyed with a tough Iowa defense, and didn’t blink in a big-time road environment. The biggest game in Iowa City in years devolved into the inevitable late in the second quarter.
Smith reached for the goal line for his second score, and Ohio State’s double-digit lead would never be in doubt. By the time it was over, Ohio State had the ball for the last 10 minutes of the game, slowly draining the clock and the life from Iowa.
“Played physical, built some confidence,” Day said. “Some momentum as we head into the middle of the season.”
And right into Bloomington where the next statement will be made.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
