Rutgers has spent years using Indiana as a measuring stick, and the numbers now tell a very different story than they did not long ago.
When the Scarlet Knights first joined the Big Ten, they had the Hoosiers in their pocket. Under Kyle Flood, Rutgers won two straight, including that wild 55-52 comeback in Bloomington after trailing by 25. Then came the Chris Ash years, and Indiana flipped the script completely, going 4-0 against Rutgers and capping that stretch with a 35-0 shutout in 2019 when the Scarlet Knights managed just one passing yard.
Greg Schiano’s second run has brought a cleaner picture. Rutgers is 3-1 against Indiana since his return, and the Scarlet Knights have taken the last three.
The 2021 meeting was a 38-3 rout in which even an offensive lineman got into the end zone. Two years later, Rutgers rolled 34-17 at Memorial Stadium to lock up its first bowl trip in nine seasons.
“That’s one step on the journey,” Schiano said after that milestone.
Now the teams meet again Saturday night in Piscataway, with Rutgers at 1-3 overall and 0-1 in the Big Ten and No. 6 Indiana sitting at 4-0 and 1-0. It’s their first matchup since that 2023 win, and the gap between the programs has never looked wider.
Rutgers has had its own arc in the meantime. The Scarlet Knights reached bowls in back-to-back seasons in 2023 and 2024, then slipped back in 2025 and have struggled badly this fall. Indiana, meanwhile, has surged to heights that were hard to imagine before Curt Cignetti arrived after the 2023 season.
What Cignetti has done is staggering: a 31-2 record, a 20-game winning streak still alive, the first 16-0 season in college football since 1894, and a national championship last fall that ranks among the most unlikely ever. The Hoosiers have also produced some of the most lopsided wins the sport has seen.
The contrast with Rutgers is brutal.
Indiana has won 18 Big Ten games under Cignetti, not counting the conference title game win over Ohio State last fall. Rutgers has won 22 Big Ten games since joining the league in 2014, with 15 of those coming across six seasons under Schiano.
Since the start of the 2024 season, Rutgers is 13-16 overall, 6-13 in Big Ten play and 7-15 against Power Four opponents. Indiana is 31-2 overall, 18-1 in the Big Ten and 22-2 against Power Four teams.
The Hoosiers have won almost as many games under Cignetti, 31, as Rutgers has won since Schiano’s second stint began ahead of the 2020 season, 32.
Indiana also piled up four postseason wins last fall - the Big Ten Championship Game and three College Football Playoff victories - while Rutgers has seven postseason wins in school history, all bowls, and six of them under Schiano.
The Hoosiers went 6-0 against ranked teams last fall and have spent 29 straight weeks in the rankings. Rutgers has lost 44 straight games against ranked opponents dating to 2009 and hasn’t been ranked since the final week of the 2012 season, both the longest droughts among Power Four programs.
Even the all-time numbers have shifted. Indiana, once the losingest program in college football history with 715 losses, has been passed by Northwestern. Rutgers, now at 711 losses, is in position to overtake Indiana soon as well.
For Schiano, the bigger question is what Indiana’s rise means for a program like Rutgers, which once looked like a peer in the same kind of rebuild. During Tuesday’s press conference, he praised the Hoosiers but did not dive into how their success changes the pressure on his own job.
“When you look from 23 to today, how much college football has changed - again, it’s a tribute to the job Coach Cignetti has done and that the University of Indiana has done,” Schiano said. “But certainly a different look than it was just three years ago.”
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