Midwestern Revival Tour: The Introduction

This week, Ross Dellenger and Pat Forde are road-tripping across four states that represent the unexpected heart of college football in 2020.

CHICAGO — This doesn’t seem like the home of college football.

It’s blustery and cold here, Old Man Winter already enveloping this place in his chilly grip. This is a Midwestern metropolis with giant skyscrapers and a penchant for pro sports, not a quaint southern town obsessed with the college game.

The same goes for a place 180 miles south of here, Indianapolis, a basketball-crazed city that suddenly finds itself, along with Chi-Town, within the most happening college football hub.

In such a bizarre season, it’s only fitting that the center of college football in 2020 is found in America’s heartland. It does not come with swampy humidity, southern drawls and jugs of sweet tea. In 2020, the greatest concentration of undefeated teams is in a place that many pegged as a gridiron graveyard—the Midwest. The sport's inexorable shift South has actually reversed course, for the moment.

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From a windy city along the banks of Lake Michigan to a hardy town in the hills of the Appalachians, the cradle of 2020 football covers four contiguous states, four conferences and six schools. There are a couple of giants (Ohio State and Notre Dame, the second and sixth winningest programs of all time). There is an academic blue blood trying to create an equally elite football program (Northwestern). There is a traditional basketball school enjoying an every-half-century football renaissance (Indiana). And there are strivers from outside the Power 5 conferences yearning for their chance (Cincinnati and Marshall).

Of the 99 FBS teams that have played at least three games this season, 12 remain undefeated. Six of those are located hundreds of miles from one another in six separate states and in three distinct regions of the country (Liberty, BYU, Alabama, Nevada, San Jose State and Coastal Carolina).

And the other six? Right here, in this Midwestern geographic footprint. They reside in an area virtually the same size as the state of Missouri—the distance from the two farthest points, Huntington, W.Va., and Evanston, Ill., a paltry 459 miles.

In fact, if you wanted to make a road trip out of it, you could do it, with enough Red Bulls and Slim Jims, in a single day. The entire circuit is a 12-hour ride, with an average of less than two hours between each stop.

Start in Evanston for a slice of Chicago deep dish. Next, hit South Bend for a beer at the Linebacker Lounge. In Bloomington, there’s Nick’s English Hut, and in Cincinnati, try a cheese coney from Skyline Chili. Next up is Columbus’s Varsity Club and its world-famous tailgate party (excluding pandemic times). And finish the trip with a juicy burger from the Marshall Hall of Fame Cafe.

This, surprisingly enough, is where the action is. Which bucks the national trend.

The last five national champions have come from the South. So have all 10 College Football Playoff finalists in that time: Alabama and Clemson four times each, and once apiece for LSU and Georgia.

The Midwest? Not so much. No school from the Midwest has so much as won a playoff game since Ohio State in 2014. Other than the constant prowess of the Buckeyes, the rest of the region has been written off in terms of championship contention.

Yet here it is, mid-November, and four teams from this cradle of football are in the top 10 and two are in the top five. The region finds itself not only well-represented in the polls (and not just by the usual suspects), but it also had a significant impact at the polls (the Midwest heavily impacted results of the 2020 presidential election).

There could be more teams on the way as well. Western Michigan, Central Michigan and Kent State are 2–0, with games scheduled for this week. And don’t forget 2–0 Wisconsin, with its third game scheduled for this weekend.

Sure, playing little to no nonconference games impacts records, but there’s little doubt that these are quality teams and legitimate contenders. Of course, there is good football elsewhere; Alabama is still ranked No. 1 and may ultimately decide how much glory the Midwest is allowed to have. And Clemson remains undefeated in the regular season with Trevor Lawrence as its starting quarterback—for three years now. Florida and Texas A&M may well muscle into the playoff picture as well, and don’t forget USC and Oregon in the Pac-12.

But for now, the land of jerseys and hoodies—not suit coats and cocktail dresses—is atop college football. And for maybe this brief moment, before two consequential clashes this weekend of undefeated teams—Indiana at Ohio State and Wisconsin at Northwestern—this is football’s winningest footprint.

Sports Illustrated’s two college football writers set out on a (masked and socially distanced) journey to the six campuses in this heartland footprint. Ross Dellenger has the northern tier, trekking West to East from Evanston to South Bend to Columbus. Pat Forde is taking the southern route and going East to West, from Huntington to Cincinnati to Bloomington.

We’ll roll out two stories a day from these Midwestern towns starting Wednesday and running through Friday, as well as updates on our social media platforms, using the hashtag #MidwesternRevivalTour