College Football Overtime: Indiana's unprecedented rise, Penn State's historic nosedive top Week 7 takeaways

College football gives you a little bit of everything each week.

In Los Angeles, a walk-on running back got called into emergency action and responded with 158 yards.

The preseason No. 2 team, Penn State, lost a third straight game and became the first program in the past 30 years to lose back-to-back matchups as at least a 20-point favorite.

A Red River Rivalry quarterback came back only 17 days after having hand surgery while his fellow signal-caller in the game, Arch Manning, managed to shut up the doubters for a week.

Throw in some zany SEC games and a few Big 12 upsets, and college football's Week 7 delivered.

Oh, did I mention Indiana? My bad, I was too busy Googling Curt Cignetti.

Week 7 is over, and you know how this works: Let's run through College Football Overtime, highlighting everything you need to know from the week that was in college football.

ONE BIG THING: INDIANA'S UNPRECEDENTED RISE

History is difficult to defy in college football.

Blue bloods are blue bloods for a reason. They have the championships, pedigree and support to win annually. They're the sport's bullies and push programs like Indiana into a locker.

Well, at least they used to.

The Hoosiers have been around for 127 years. For 125 of them, they failed to win 10 games and hadn't factored into the national championship discussion since the 1960s. They were a checkmark game for opponents in the Big Ten.

Not anymore.

No. 7 Indiana (6-0) just went on the road and made the statement of the season with a 30-20 win over No. 3 Oregon , which fell to 5-1. It's the program's first-ever road win in 47 tries against an opponent ranked in the top five.

It's also the signal of something remarkably unexpected in college football — Indiana is a legitimate contender.

What other takeaway is there for an Indiana team that just passed the only remaining question it had as a program: Could it beat an elite team?

That lingered after losses a season ago to Ohio State and Notre Dame. But you can consider that question moot after the Hoosiers owned the line of scrimmage (six sacks!) against one of the sport's recruiting powers (and most expensive rosters).

Frankly, there's never been a team like Indiana in the modern era.

We've seen one-year flashes from teams in transition, which is possible in the transfer portal and NIL era. That's how TCU reached the 2022 national title game.

We've seen portal-heavy programs find success (think Florida State, Michigan State or SMU). But we've never experienced a program go from afterthought to no-doubt, glaringly obvious contender in such a short time.

Give the Hoosiers' staff credit. This team returned only eight starters off last year's 11-win team. They had to rework the roster yet again with 23 transfers. They weren't all highly rated, ranking just 25th nationally, but there were evaluation wins across the board.

Roman Hemby was the No. 15 running back in the 247Sports Transfer Rankings. He scored two touchdowns against the Ducks.

Fellow Maryland transfer Kellan Wyatt ranked as the No. 91 edge rusher. He had 1 1/2 sacks against Oregon.

There's also leftover additions like James Madison linebacker transfer Aiden Fisher, who was the best player in the game with 13 tackles and 1 1/2 sacks. Indiana evaluates exceptionally.

Curt Cignetti is now 125-35 as a head coach between stops at IUP, Elon, James Madison and Indiana.

Cignetti is a consummate winner. He's the type of out-of-the-box hire other athletic directors should pay attention to.

Indiana used to be a stepping stone on a blue blood's path to a Big Ten title. Now? That path, at least in part, runs through Indiana.

It's one of the most remarkable status changes in college football this century.

REPORT CARD

A. L.A.'S BIG TEN TEAMS

UCLA and USC are on divergent paths in 2025.

The Trojans are hopeful contenders. The Bruins have already fired their coach and are mostly playing for pride after an 0-4 start.

But both programs played outstanding Saturday.

The Bruins continue to look like an entirely new program with Tim Skipper as the program's interim coach. A week after an upset of Penn State, UCLA thumped Michigan State (3-3), 38-13, in East Lansing.

The offense looks transformed under the direction of new play-caller Jerry Neuheisel. A unit that managed just 10 points against New Mexico just a month ago has combined for 80 over the past two weeks against Power Four teams with winning records at the times of the games.

It'd be easy for UCLA's players to quit on the season. Instead, none of them have entered the portal and the Bruins (2-4) could create some more upsets down the stretch.

USC (5-1) made a different sort of statement in a 31-13 win over Michigan.

The No. 15 Wolverines (4-2) bullied the Trojans a season ago, running for 290 yards and piling up eight tackles for loss in a rude welcome-to-the-Big Ten moment for USC. It was much different this time around.

Despite losing its top two backs to injury and being forced to play a walk-on for the majority of the game, the Trojans ran for 224 yards on 6.2 yards per carry, didn't allow a sack and held Michigan's No. 13 rushing attack to 3.5 yards per touch.

Physical football isn't Lincoln Riley's brand. He's a quarterback developer and point scorer. But his best teams have always won in the trenches, especially on offense.

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