If you took a swig every time that read or heard words “I’ve never seen anything like it” after Tyrese Haliburton’s Game 1 dagger of the 2025 NBA Finals, apologies. You’re probably still hungover days after the fact. I promise to not make any loud noises.
OK, maybe just 1 loud word?
Holy COW, we’re witnessing an all-time underdog sports moment.
No, that wasn’t a “Hicks vs. Knicks” jab at the Indiana Pacers, but it’s worth noting that I’m writing this 14 miles east of downtown Indianapolis at my in-laws’ house/5-acre farm, which didn’t witness Haliburton’s continued heroics in real time because they did the thing most human beings would do. That is, hit the hay (pun intended) as Oklahoma City secured a 15-point lead with less than 10 minutes to play.
Indiana’s run, which is a long way from complete after taking a stunning 1-0 lead in the Finals, had me doing the thing that most human beings reading this website would do. That is, wonder about the college football equivalent to this.
If the Pacers do complete the impossible, it would indeed qualify as “impossible.” We’re talking about a team that was +2,200 to win the East (via DraftKings) and +6,600 to win it all entering the Playoffs. That’s a 66-to-1 return on your money for those keeping score at home, and the Pacers are 3 wins away from that. They were 10th out of 16 teams in the ESPN Bet odds entering the Playoffs, and entering the Finals, they had the longest odds (5-to-1) to win a title in 21 years.
In college football, we’ve never seen anything like that (yet)
To be fair, we’ve mostly never had a system that could yield such a feat. A Group of 5 team never played for a BCS National Championship and only 1 Group of 5 team reached the 4-team Playoff, which was a Cincinnati team that was kept at an arm’s length by Alabama in the 2021 Cotton Bowl.
You could’ve made the case that 2024 Arizona State would’ve had some Pacers vibes after it was picked to finish last in the Big 12, but then Texas did the whole “4th and 13” thing and the Sun Devils’ run ended in the quarterfinals.
Will that underdog dynamic change in an expanded Playoff field? And won’t that be an even tougher climb in the likely event that a 16-team Playoff awaits in 2026? The odds would suggest it’s extremely unlikely that a Group of 5 team will make a true run … which is the exact thing that’s been said about the Pacers making this type of run.
And yes, the Pacers are like a Group of 5 team. Why? Aren’t they drafting from the same pool of players that everyone else in the NBA is? Sure, but in addition to the fact that the Pacers have never won an NBA Championship, they rank No. 18 in the NBA in payroll and they avoided the luxury tax, which is something that only 4 of the last 18 NBA Champions did (H/T Sportico).
To recap, it’s a small-market team that doesn’t spend at a time when that’s never been more en vogue, and it doesn’t have any championship history to speak of. At least not in its current league. Oh, and it had nearly impossible odds to win it all when the postseason began.
Did I just describe the Pacers or a Group of 5 team?
It’s a fair question. Another fair question is what would be the exact comp for what the Pacers are doing because as of this writing, we’re not talking about a team that’s been crowned an NBA champion. We’re just talking about a team that already beat 22-to-1 odds to win the East and is 3 wins away from beating 66-to-1 odds. It wouldn’t be a Group of 5 team winning a national championship. After all, Boise State (+41,000) and Tulane (+95,000) are the only Group of 5 teams with odds better than +100,000 to win a national championship (via FanDuel).
A better comp would be a Group of 5 team reaching the national championship
That would likely mean a Group of 5 team taking down not 1, not 2, but 3 top-12 teams. Remember that, with the post-2024 move to straight seeding, a Group of 5 team getting a first-round bye like 2024 Boise State just became much less likely.
Shoot, maybe those odds are still too long and the comp should be a Group of 5 team winning 2 Playoff games and reaching the semifinals. Cincinnati might’ve played in a Playoff semifinal game, but it didn’t have to take down multiple top-12 teams late in the season (it beat No. 9 Notre Dame on Oct. 2).
True Cinderella runs have never really existed in college football. The closest examples of that ended either by being scoffed at by the rest of the college football world (2022 TCU and 2017 UCF qualify for that for much different reasons) or by being used illustrate the bigger-picture issue with college football’s lack of a postseason tournament (like any of those Boise State Fiesta Bowl teams).
Can you imagine if this play had been made to clinch a national championship berth?
Throwback to Boise State “Statue of Liberty” play at the 2007 Fiesta Bowl ?pic.twitter.com/4oKEF1w6vs
— Football’s Greatest Moments (@FBGreatMoments) December 31, 2024For all I know, a 16-team field will keep Group of 5 teams on the outskirts of national championship contention, just like the systems before it. Perhaps it’s unrealistic to say that could ever be in play, even though the path finally exists. After all, no Group of 5 team has ever stayed within 2 scores in a Playoff game. We could actually see the gap between the Group of 5 and the Power Conferences become greater than ever in the latter half of the decade. Lord knows the TV contracts reflect that.
But the Pacers are doing everything in their power to make us rethink what longshots are capable of. There’s no longer shot in big revenue college athletics than a Group of 5 program taking down Power Conference elites in football. Nothing would be more chaotic.
And holy COW, what a story it would be.
There’s a college football equivalent to what the Pacers are doing…we’ve just never seen it (yet) Saturday Down South.
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