My, my, how the turntables ... well, you know. Notre Dame football fans are anxiously awaiting media reactions after the Indiana basketball team backed out of a bid for the postseason NIT. The Hoosiers entered the Big Ten Tournament hoping they could boost their March Madness resume, but instead lost in their first game. To Northwestern for the second time in March. And for the sixth time in seven games.
Knowing all of that, it seemed like IU should have known they weren't getting a ticket to the Big Dance. And yet, new head coach Darian Devries and company took their basketball and went home after not getting a bid. They turned down the NIT, which had offered them entrance. So, when does the months-long campaign on ESPN and social media begin calling Indiana cowards and losers? When do the "think pieces" start proclaiming teams might avoid scheduling the Hoosiers because they backed out?
The real answer to those questions is that they aren't coming. The same people who thought it was a crime against nature for Notre Dame to turn down the Pop-Tarts bowl after missing a College Football Playoff spot they actually earned don't care that Indiana is whining and complaining and claiming anything below the NCAA Tournament is beneath them.
Indiana's NIT snub exposes the double standard that buried Notre Dame football all winter
In some regards, that the Irish took all the heat this winter and Indiana will take none is a compliment. People expected Marcus Freeman and company to go to their bowl, even while getting slapped in the face.
On the flipside, Indiana stomping off to their bedroom without eating dinner like that little brat in "Where the Wild Things Are" was expected. It surprised no one.
Spending hours blasting Indiana also doesn't generate the viewership or the headlines that doing the same to Notre Dame does, either. That's the lesson to take from all this. All the people who made some truly ridiculous proclamations over the Irish skipping the College Football version of the NIT did so not because they were really angry or outraged or appalled. They just knew it would draw eyeballs and reactions and make their jobs easier when they wrote the follow-up.