10 Degrees of Separation Between Hoosiers and Huskies

The connections between the UW and Indiana football teams through the years.

As the; Indiana quarterback, Michael Penix Jr. (9) meets with teammates before a game against the Idaho Vandals. / Marc Lebryk-Imagn Images

BLOOMINGTON, Indiana -- Until Saturday's game, Washington and Indiana hadn't played on the football field for 21 seasons. That doesn't mean they didn't cross paths. In fact, the Hoosiers generously have provided their Seattle brethren with quite a haul of personnel developed in this Big Ten town.

In recent years, Indiana has sent a high-powered quarterback, an ambitious defensive coordinator turned into a head coach, a pair of his loyal assistants and a young defensive back to Montlake, sometimes wtih a stop in between, providing a pipeline of upwardly mobile football characters without getting anything in return.

Oh, there's a good chance that unbeaten and 13th-ranked Indiana (7-0 overall, 4-0 Big Ten) fully expects to collect on all of that goodwill with a victory at home over the visiting UW (4-3, 2-2), figuring on limited resistance.

To set up this Big Ten intersectional match-up, we've highlighted 10 crossover connections between these schools that span 48 years, beginning in the early stages of the Don James era at the UW that corresponds to the middle of Lee Corso's coaching time spent with the Hoosiers.

1. Michael Penix Jr. The left-handed quarterback was committed and all prepared to play for Tennessee when a coaching change left him without a scholarship and he turned to Indiana, where he had the worst luck of any college football player -- suffering four consecutive season-ending injuries. He resurrected his career at the UW by winning 25 of 28 games over two seasons, coming in second in the Heisman Trophy race and finishing second to Michigan with his teammates in the CFP national championship game. He piled up 9,544 yards and 67 touchdowns passing in Montlake, 13,741 yards and 96 scores in his career when adding in his Hoosiers numbers.

Michael Penix threw a bunch of TDs for Indiana and Washington.

Here's a small sampling of them 👇

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2. Kalen DeBoer. He spent the 2019 season at Indiana as the offensive coordinator and a mentor to a redshirt freshman named Penix, where they shared in an 8-5 season that ended up against Tennessee in the Gator Bowl. After a two-year stop as the Fresno State head coach, DeBoer guided the fortunes of the Huskies in 2022 and 2023 and took his teams to the Alamo Bowl, Sugar Bowl that stood as a CFP semifinal game and the title game.. One of his first orders of business was to entice Penix to join him in Montlake, where they both scratched each other's back and enabled each other to move up in the football hierarchy -- DeBoer taking the job at Alabama and Penix going as the eighth overall pick to the Atlanta Falcons in April's NFL Draft.

Pat McAfee Nick Saban, and Lee Corso fist bump before live broadcast during ESPN's College GameDay in Columbia, South Carolina. / Ken Ruinard / staff / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

3. Lee Corso. The Huskies made this guy look like a coaching genius in 1978 when they traveled to Bloomington, outgained Corso's Hoosiers 402-238 in total offense yardage and 23-12 in first downs -- and lost 14-7. Indiana attempted 3 passes that day and completed none. It was three yards and the UW choking on the cloud of dust. Don James' Huskies were coming off a Rose Bowl victory over Michigan. Indiana would finish 4-7, suffering one of its seven losing seasons over 10 with Corso in charge and he was fired in 1982, while the Huskies went 7-4. Corso, 89, was part of the ESPN Game Day team that descended on Bloomington this weekend for the UW-Indiana game, wearing a red sweatshirt and we likely knew well ahead of time which head gear when he would pull on for a game prediction.

4. Sunseri Brothers. The Huskies head to Indiana with a first-year safeties coach in Vinnie Sunseri, who will try to match wits against the Hoosiers' first-year co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, a guy named Tito Sunseri. Yes, they are brothers. Vinnie played safety at Alabama and in the NFL, while Tito was a Pittsburgh quarterback. Vinnie, 32, is the kid brother, three years younger than his sibling.

5. Nick Sheridan. A former Michigan quarterback, Sheridan replaced DeBoer as the Indiana offensive coordinator fin 2020, was fired after two seasons -- both times with Penix going down with crippling injuries -- and he resurfaced at the UW as DeBoer's tight-ends coach for the previous two seasons. They're now together at Alabama as head coach and co-offensive coordinator. In all, Sheridan worked five seasons for the Hoosiers, also coaching the tight ends and quarterbacks before his OC stint.

6. Lee Corso. In his first meeting against the legendary Don James, Corso brought the Hoosiers to Seattle and pulled a 20-13 upset in a battle of eventual 5-6 teams. Indiana survived in spite of the Huskies' Ronnie Rowland and Robin Earl rushing for 121 and 101 yards, respectively. The UW was hurt by a feeble aerial game -- the not-yet-great UW quarterback Warren Moon suffered through a 5-for-17 passing performance, good for just 59 yards. He must have been saving himself for the pros. Moon would throw for 70,553 yards in the NFL and CFL, which would get him inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006.

7. Jordan Shaw. With offers from Arizona, Washington and others, the Southern California defensive back settled on Indiana instead. He appeared in four Hoosiers games in 2023, starting twice, but Tom Allen's coaching staff opted to redshirt him. Shaw transferred to Arizona once Allen was fired, and then redirected to the Huskies once Jedd Fisch left Tucson and took that job. He faces his former teammates having started five of seven UW games this season, coming off the bench only when the Huskies go with an extra linebacker to begin.

Indiana Hoosiers linebackers coach William Inge directs his players against Bowling Green. / Andrew Weber-Imagn Images

8. William Inge. A former Iowa linebacker, Inge coached for seven seasons at Indiana for two coaches, Kevin Wilson and Tom Allen, serving as co-defensive coordinator, linebackers coach and a special-teams coach through 2019. He met Kalen DeBoer in that final season and accompanied him first to Fresno State and then the UW, both times as a defensive coordinator. He's now the linebackers coach for Tennessee.

9. Keith Gilbertson. He did something his mentor, Don James, couldn't do with the Huskies -- he beat Indiana. Gilbertson's team took a decisive 38-13 victory in Seattle in 2003 before a crowd of 71,125. The Gerry DiNardo-coached Hoosiers actually led 13-10 early in the third quarter before the UW scored four touchdowns before the period ended. Both coaches were fired following the 2004 season.

10. Joe Norman. Indiana's all-time leading tackler with 444 played against the Huskies in 1976 and 1978 and the linebacker was a big reason his underdog teams pulled off 14-7 and 20-13 victories. As a senior, he led the Hoosiers with a school-record 199 tackles, which included a school-record 26 against Ohio State that season and 16 against the UW with 3 tackles for loss. All of this earned him second-team Associated Press All-America honors and a second-round NFL Draft selection, 45th overall, from the Seattle Seahawks and he played the 1979-81 and 1983 seasons just down the street from the Huskies.

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