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It's been a really long time since Indiana beat Ohio State in football

An awful lot has happened since the last time Indiana beat Ohio State.

By Matt Brown
Pat Lovell-USA TODAY Sports

After battling Virginia Tech and the best of the MAC, Ohio State will open Big Ten play in Bloomington to take on the Indiana Hoosiers. If recent history, or even substantially less recent history is any indication, the Buckeyes should not only beat Indiana, but doing it going away.

The Buckeyes haven't lost to Indiana since 1988, beating the Hoosiers a whopping 23 times in a row, with only one of those games since 1994 being a single digit victory (a 45-42 win in 2012 that looked closer than it probably was). Indiana's 1988 win, for what it's worth, also came against the worst Buckeye team since the 1960s, a 4-6-1 squad in John Cooper's first season. The Hoosiers were also pretty good in their own right, finishing the year #20 in the AP Poll. They haven't finished the the Top 25 since then.

Indiana isn't the only team Ohio State has dominated over the last few decades. Northwestern has only beaten the Buckeyes once since the early 1970s, and Minnesota only has one victory since the early 1980s. Both of those teams have a relatively recent win over the Buckeyes though (Northwestern in 2004, Minnesota in 2000). When it comes to consistent futility against Ohio State, the clubhouse leader is the Indiana Hoosiers.

1988 was a long time ago. Hell, I was only a year old then. To help put that number into some perspective though, here's some context.

The last time Indiana beat Ohio State:

  • The Simpsons didn't exist
  • The GameBoy didn't exist
  • Taylor Swift didn't exist
  • O.J. Simpson was more famous for being hilarious in The Naked Gun than for anything else
  • Nelson Mandela was still in prison
  • The Berlin Wall was still standing
  • ...So was the USSR
  • Digital answering machines didn't exist
  • The Big 12 was just the Big 8
  • Florida State wasn't in the ACC
  • Long Beach State and Pacific were FBS football programs
  • Barry Sanders and Troy Aikman were college football players
  • The Big Ten only had ten teams
  • The first Gulf War had yet to happen
  • This was the top song in America.
  • The Top 25 poll didn't even exist. It was just the AP Top 20 (Indiana was 20).
  • Syracuse and Washington State were better than Alabama.
  • Texas, Penn State and Ohio State all finished below .500, but Rutgers did not.
Indiana will beat Ohio State again eventually, but with the Buckeyes returning nearly everybody of consequence from last year's championship team, and with Indiana still having major questions on defense and at wideout, next year doesn't look like the year the streak ends.

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