Indiana is 5-0 and sitting at the top of the Big Ten, while Ohio State is 4-1 after letting a winnable game against Texas slip away late. On paper, that makes the Hoosiers look like the better team. But Urban Meyer is looking at it a little differently, looking past the records and putting more weight on the teams Indiana has actually beaten to get here.

“Indiana’s 2-0 to me,” Urban Meyer said on The Triple Option. “I don’t even, I don’t watch the highlights. I don’t care.”

Curt Cignetti’s squad may have five wins, but Meyer isn’t treating them equally. The Hoosiers opened against North Texas, Howard, and Western Kentucky, winning 52-16, 55-0, and 38-0. The margins were convincing, but Meyer is more interested in what those games actually proved.

“I look at Ohio State’s close loss to Texas as a much better performance than playing Howard,” he said. “Why would you look at that? I don’t think that should count.”

A closer look at those opponents adds more context to his point. Howard is 2-3, with both of its games against Big Ten opposition ending in blowouts. Indiana beat the Bison 55-0, and Rutgers followed with a 58-7 win. Howard’s two victories came against Alabama A&M and Hampton.

Western Kentucky has been even worse at 1-4, losing 49-14 to Nevada, 70-20 to Georgia, 38-0 to Indiana, and 34-13 to New Mexico State. Its only win came against Mercyhurst. North Texas is the one result with more weight.

The Mean Green are 3-2, have beaten UNLV 44-6 and Tulsa 45-44 in overtime, and even outgained Indiana despite losing 52-16. But North Texas also entered the season after losing its entire coaching staff and every starter from the previous year, making 2026 a major rebuild.

Meyer then went a step further, suggesting college football should somehow account for teams loading up on easier opponents.

“I think at some point there should be some kind of bylaw that says, ‘yeah, you can do whatever you want, but you’re going to finish season 9-0 or something’ because it just does not count,” he said. “That’s not fair to both sides. It’s not good for the game.”

Meanwhile, Mark Ingram pushed back with the obvious counterpoint. Indiana followed a similar formula last year and still went on to win the national championship. Meyer, however, was not moved.

“Yeah, so they can do it, but it just doesn’t count,” he replied. “I don’t know if I’ve agreed Indiana going backwards, but Indiana’s 2-0.”

That same standard can also be applied to Ohio State. The Buckeyes opened with a 56-3 blowout over Ball State and later beat Kent State 59-3, two MAC teams with a combined 1-8 record against FBS opposition.

The part where Meyer’s argument makes sense is that Ohio State went on the road to face Texas and lost 24-23 in a game it nearly won. Indiana has not faced a comparable nonconference test, giving the Buckeyes a tougher overall résumé even if both teams have benefited from easier games.

The Hoosiers are 2-0 in Big Ten play after beating Northwestern at home and Rutgers on the road. Their 47-15 demolition of the Scarlet Knights was far more revealing than anything that happened against Howard. Indiana ran for 336 yards, allowed only 60 and held Rutgers to a combined 2-for-14 on third and fourth downs.

Now the schedule gets serious. Nebraska is next, followed by Ohio State on October 17, with Michigan, USC and Washington still waiting later in the season. Those games will tell us whether Indiana’s perfect start carries real weight.

That being said, Meyer is not the only one looking at Indiana’s résumé through that lens.

Meyer isn’t alone in putting the schedule under the microscope

Meyer is hardly the only one who noticed the gap in difficulty. Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde entered the season calling Indiana’s September slate the easiest among power-conference teams, pointing to North Texas, Howard, Western Kentucky and Northwestern. He also noted that Indiana was among the power-conference programs playing only nine power-level opponents. Ohio State sat at the opposite end, with Forde calling the Buckeyes’ overall schedule the toughest in the country and their October stretch the toughest of any power-conference team.

Joel Klatt has taken a different approach. He is not dismissing Indiana’s early wins or treating the Hoosiers like an unproven team. Instead, he has framed the October 17 meeting with Ohio State as a battle for “supremacy in the Big Ten.” Indiana is the reigning national champion, has not lost at home under Curt Cignetti and, in Klatt’s view, can strengthen its claim as the conference’s premier program by beating Ohio State again.

That gives Meyer’s argument a natural counterweight. Pat Forde questioned Indiana’s schedule before the season, while Klatt is essentially saying the Hoosiers will soon get the chance to settle the debate themselves. Meyer can call Indiana “2-0” for now, but once Ohio State comes to Bloomington, there will be far less room to argue about what the record really means.