Paul Finebaum lays out Indiana’s case and hopes the Hoosiers face an SEC team in the playoffs

Paul Finebaum is willing to admit it. The SEC Network host and ESPN executive are willing to predict that Indiana will make the College Football Playoff, but that’s also the result of some chaos from the SEC in Week 13.

Indiana’s 10-0 start fell by the wayside last weekend as Ohio State dominated the Hoosiers in Columbus. Finebaum admitted that he saw the game on FOX, although he felt trapped on the plane during the broadcast.

Finebaum also criticized the broadcast team of Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt for being too “political” in favor of the Hoosiers. This is likely a reference to Klatt, who said Indiana head coach Curt Sinetti and Georgia head coach Kirby Smart are hoping to get a pass from the CFP committee with a tough loss on their resumes.

“They’re going to come in,” Finebaum said of the Hoosiers during an appearance Monday on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning. “You can’t make a strong argument against Indiana against some of the SEC teams because the SEC teams are going to win. The only thing that really angered me, and that might have been the fact that I was being held hostage on the plane. I couldn’t turn it off. The politics on the part of the (FOX) broadcast team was over the top, it was truly disingenuous.”

Ultimately, losing a key group of SEC teams forced Finebaum to admit that IU would be on the final roster, although he now wishes the Hoosiers had to go to the SEC in the first round:

“But that’s okay. It was funny, at 3 o’clock on Saturday I thought Indiana was as dead as it could be. By midnight they returned. I think all the controversy over Indiana is over,” Finebaum admitted. “They’re about to come in. Now I can’t wait, I just hope they go to an SEC team’s home stadium that Friday or Saturday night so we can find out what we already know. That an SEC team would beat them badly.”

Indiana has yet to get past Purdue to finish 11-1 in the playoffs, but the Hoosiers are the clear favorites in this rivalry. As for a potential CFP matchup against an SEC opponent, be sure to use the SDS sports betting app to keep track of all the game lines when Selection Sunday arrives.