College football, like any sport, loves an underdog story. That is, until that underdog starts to take away from the entrenched powers that be across the sport. Right on cue, Tommy Tuberville, bastion of morality, spoke about Indiana football's fast rise this season, per Ehsan Kassim of Indy Star.

“You just don't build a team, you pretty much buy a team now,” Tuberville said. “That was a little bit forbidden when I was in coaching, but now it's legal. Look at Indiana. They went out and bought them a football team, and look where they're at. They're playing Ohio State this week, possibly play for a national championship and maybe in the Final Four.

“Pittsburgh went out last year and a lot of their players wanted more money. Head coach says you're all done, go somewhere else and went out and bought another team. A few weeks ago, he was 7-0. You can get it done but as Nick Saban says you can buy them but you've got to buy the right ones.”

Tuberville was the head coach of Ole Miss (1995 to 1998), Auburn (1999 to 2008), Texas Tech (2010 to 2012) and Cincinnati (2013 to 2016). He has been a United States senator in Alabama since 2021.

Mind you, Tuberwille was an assistant coach with the Miami Hurricanes from 1986 to 1993. Need I say more?

Indiana football deserves credit for making the right hire

Head coach Curt Cignetti has proven to be a fantastic hire after coming over from James Madison. He was a WR coach and recruiting coordinator from 2007 to 2010 with Nick Saban's staff at Alabama. During the Big Ten media days, he spoke on this new NIL age of college football.

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“It’s a new day and age in football where, with the portal, you can change the team real quick,” Cignetti said. “I was given the resources to do that, and I knew when we came in, (and) I started interviewing the old players, that we’d need a lot of new faces. Fortunately, they did me a favor by leaving.”

Of Cignettis' 31 transfer players in his first recruiting class with Indiana football, 14 came from his previous job at JMU.

Tuberville hopes to restructure the way NIL deals work, likely to protect the old guard—the blue bloods of college football.

“I’m not against players making money, but we got to have some kind of penalty for players breaking contracts,” Tuberville said. “So it’s got to go both ways … So we’ll continue to look at it once we get a new administration in. I’m going to get a couple of people on the Democratic side.”

Indiana football travels to Columbus to face Ohio State on Saturday, November 23, at noon EST.