Photo courtesy of IU Athletics-

Not to borrow excessively from another outlet covering Indiana football, but that just happened. Not only did it happen, it was even more ugly on the field than the 55-3 final score would appear to indicate.

Maybe Michigan State is just that good (doubtful), maybe the Hoosiers are contractually obligated to have a few games like this every season (59-7 against Wisconsin ring any bells?).

Whatever the reason for such a crushing defeat, Indiana couldn’t have put forth a more disheartening effort in East Lansing on Saturday afternoon.

Kevin Wilson said after the game that his team – for the most part – did a good job keeping its effort up, but that the Michigan State game plan was well executed and that the individual Hoosier players may have been trying to do too much.

His tone and body language were more interesting than anything else, as he looked like a different man than we saw at the beginning of the season – a man sick of losing, but resigned to not having much choice in the matter.

Right now, that’s the perfect way to describe the fan base. Watching yesterday’s game was the polar opposite of what a fan hopes to get out of watching his team: they didn’t play well, they looked totally overmatched and they never gave even the most fleeting impression that they had a chance to win the game.

Indiana’s lone scoring drive came about only because of an ill-advised fake punt attempt by Michigan State and even that drive stalled at the five-yard line, which led to the Hoosiers being forced to settle for a 22-yard field goal from Mitch Ewald.

When even successful scoring drives are demoralizing, that’s when you know it’s just not your day. For Indiana, it hasn’t been their day at any point this year.

The Hoosiers have lost five of their seven conference games by at least 21 points, have failed to record a victory against an FBS opponent all season and will be underdogs Thanksgiving weekend against Purdue as the two teams battle for the Old Oaken Bucket.

With Saturday’s demoralizing defeat, Indiana already has lost double digit games for the first time since 2003 and barring an upset against Purdue, the Hoosiers are looking at the worst season of IU football since 1984 – Bill Mallory’s first season as head coach.

Any way it’s sliced, this has been a historically bad season for a historically dismal program.

It’s not just the fans that are suffering through this – this year has been a tough one on the players as well. The attrition numbers have borne that out, as the number of players who have been dismissed from or left the team is in double digits.

At some point a team this short on talent and experience runs out of answers, and the game against Michigan State was that point. Sophomore wide receiver, Kofi Hughes’ twitter account spoke volumes with his first post, consisting of only one word, after the game – ‘Embarrassed’.

What changes will Kevin Wilson make to improve IU's football program this offseason? Photo courtesy of IU Athletics

Hughes’ second statement was equally stark but served to give some hope to a fan base looking for a reason to get behind this team.

“Apologies go out to whatever’s left of our IU fan base. We will get s**t right for next year.”

Hughes has been one of the standout examples of a player buying into the program and committing himself to improving not only his own play but also his team.

While Indiana hasn’t lived up to even the most meager expectations, the team still has players committed to getting whatever they can out of the rest of this season. If that has an effect on his teammates in a game against the Boilermakers that they believe they can win, it wouldn’t be a surprise.

I don’t believe that this week’s contest with Purdue will have much bearing on the program going forward (there’s likely to be plenty of turbulence over the offseason) but it will be interesting to see the effort and execution that the Hoosiers put forth over Thanksgiving weekend. Personally, it will be much more compelling to watch that than the scoreboard.

Hopefully, this weekend’s contest with Michigan State was rock bottom and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If not, I’m not sure how much lower this team can sink.