Paul Finebaum couldn’t help himself. With Indiana now standing at the brink of a national title, the longtime SEC voice waived the runoff as a “cute story.” He claimed that the hype would disappear by Tuesday when the NFL playoffs took center stage. Plus, to make his point, he even dragged BYU’s 1984 championship, saying, “Everybody yawned” because it didn’t come from a usual power. That framing didn’t sit well with Fox analyst Tim Brando, who didn’t just challenge the take but also questioned the system that allows such narratives.

“I completely agree with Finebaum,” Brando wrote on X. “That, regardless of who wins, the Hoosiers in particular will not make the ‘A Block’ on news-gathering programs and embrace debate shows after Tuesday morning, but whose fault is that? It’s clear to me! It’s the @CFBPlayoff and those that decided to wink & nod and not even entertain bids from anyone other than the Worldwide Leader.

They established a deal that was guaranteed to lose for the Exclusive Rights Holder! Paul routinely blasts @bigten Commissioner Tony Petitti, and does so for being a problem for expansion moving forward, and on this, he’s way off base, and enhances the spiraling image of a collective bias in media when it comes to our sport…”

Brando didn’t mince his words. He acknowledged what most fans already thought: Paul Finebaum consistently views college football through an SEC-first lens. And it’s not just him. The SEC has been the media’s favorite conference for decades. To be fair, the results justify the action. Since 2000, the SEC has won the majority of national titles, including a seven-year streak from 2006 to 2012. Success naturally drives coverage.

Plus, market dynamics have only reinforced that imbalance. Birmingham, Alabama, has led college football TV viewership for more than a decade, giving networks a clear incentive to follow the audience. Then there’s ESPN, the network’s ties to the SEC only grew stronger with the 10-year, $3 billion deal that began in 2024 and now pays the conference over $800 million annually. That’s why Brando called the system “structurally broken.”

But that narrative has cracked. The last few seasons haven’t belonged to the SEC. Michigan won the 2023 title. Ohio State took it in 2024. Now it’s Indiana, a Big Ten team, lining up against Miami from the ACC. Calling the Hoosiers a “cute story” at this point isn’t analysis, it’s dismissal. It downplays the team and insults the conference all over again. The SEC’s “deepest league” label really collapsed during the 2025–26 bowl season.

Despite landing five of the 12 playoff spots, and reportedly wanting seven, the conference finished 4–10 in bowls and went 3–5 in the CFP. More teams didn’t mean more wins. Against other Power 4 leagues, the SEC struggled enough that many now argue the Big Ten has overtaken it. That shift is driving playoff debates. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti is pushing for a 24-team format, which would eliminate conference title games.

The SEC prefers 16, largely because the title game drives massive ratings and revenue. Giving that up would mean losing a key platform that fuels the SEC’s media dominance. A 24-team playoff would level the field and make stories like Indiana harder to dismiss. Finebaum might still be right that the media could move on quickly, as the NFL’s ratings dwarf college football. But Indiana’s run stands out because it’s rare. And if the game delivers, that story won’t be so easy to ignore.

Indiana’s success this season caught a lot of people off guard. While Paul Finebaum has used his usual tactics to downplay and criticize the Hoosiers, a strange narrative has also popped up suggesting that Indiana must have been cheating to reach this level of success.

Never-ending conspiracy theories against the Hoosiers

The cheating talk around Indiana has mostly been smoke with no fire. It all started as an unverified social media rumor, but that was enough to get the internet buzzing. The main claim came from a single user who alleged that Indiana hacked into Veo and Pixellot. It’s an automated camera system that the teams use to record practices and to watch opponents’ private footage. The rumor escalated from there.

It claimed that Indiana broke into cloud-based systems to access game plans and opening scripts. And that apparently explained why they “knew” plays in advance. The problem? There’s zero evidence to prove it. Industry experts, and even a coach from an opposing team, have flat-out dismissed the accusations as “asinine.”

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Players like Hoosiers defensive star Aiden Fisher set the record straight.

“It’s just the way it’s played out,” Fisher said about the team’s early defensive dominance. “I have seen all the stuff about different things for our team. It’s funny and kind of ridiculous to me, but we watch film, we study, we prepare.”

It’s a pretty straight-up answer. Then, offensive lineman Pat Coogan also backed up his teammate. 

“Everyone wants to know what the secret (is), right?” Pat Coogan shares in a conversation with Andy Staples on Saturday. “There is no secret. The secret’s in the work. The secret’s in the prep. There’s no magic pill we take. There’s no secret book we read that gives us all the keys to success.”