‘Surreal’ Becomes Real for Carpenter, Hoosiers
Pete DiPrimio | IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - James Carpenter didn’t see this coming. How could he? The Indiana defensive lineman was once a recruiting afterthought, a walk-on seemingly destined for irrelevance at a school more known for its presidential namesake (James Madison) than football excellence, a guy as likely to earn All-Big Ten recognition as the Hoosiers, a perennially struggling football program that had won nine total games in the previous three seasons, were to play for a national championship.
Improbability is now reality. It’s as if an alternate universe had blasted its way into this one, and Carpenter is loving every minute of it.
“This is surreal,” he says with a smile from a Memorial Stadium Don Croftcheck Team Room stage.
In the sixth and final season of his college career, Carpenter is a 6-2, 288-pound difference maker for an 11-1, history-making IU team set to play to play 11-1 Notre Dame Friday night at iconic Notre Dame Stadium in a college playoff opener. IU hasn’t played there since 1991, hasn’t won there since 1906, hasn’t made the playoffs since … never.
“Going back to where I started in 2019 as a walk-on at JMU, if you had told me I’d be playing for a national title at Indiana, I would not have believed you,” Carpenter says. “It’s been an incredible ride so far with a great five years at JMU, and now here. It’s surreal, but we want to finish the job.”
That would mean beating Notre Dame, then Georgia in the Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl, and then two other teams to win the program's first national football title in the first-ever 12-team playoff format.
Curt Cignetti, who has won national-coach-of-the-year honors in his debut Hoosier season, has instilled belief and a winning culture to a program that has had only limited doses of it since it began in 1887, never at this level.
“It’s realizing what kind of opportunity we have,” Carpenter says. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We get to play for a national championship, and this is where it starts.”
Let others dwell on the fact that IU hasn’t beaten Notre Dame since 1950 and isn’t expected to do so Friday night. These Hoosiers, having already made history in so many ways this season, want more.
“Notre Dame is a blue-blood program when it comes to college football,” Carpenter says. “To go there and beat them in this situation in an environment that will be very hostile, with all the history behind it, with all the storybook stuff coming into it, would be awesome.”
Having already beaten another blue-blood program in Michigan, and having already played another (Ohio State) competitively at Ohio Stadium, the moment won’t be too big for the Hoosiers,” Carpenter says
“There won’t be any issues about not being locked in. It started with the (Dec. 8 playoff) selection show. If you’re not locked in for this game, something is wrong with you. It’s what we came here to do -- win a national championship.”
If that seems unlikely, it’s no more so than Carpenter’s journey to this point.
A standout Virginia high school career in which he excelled in football, lacrosse, basketball and track -- he was all-state on offense and defense in football, all-state in lacrosse and finished second in the state track shot put -- didn’t generate major college interest.
Cignetti, then the James Madison head coach, was the only Division-I coach to express interest. Carpenter walked on at James Madison and worked his way into a two-time All-Sun Belt Conference selection and then earned honorable-mention All-Big Ten recognition for the Hoosiers this season after totaling 31 tackles. His 9.5 tackles for loss and 5.0 sacks are second on the team to Mikail Kamara’s 15 and 10. He's broken up a pass and has four quarterback hits.
Carpenter also was a finalist for the Burlsworth Trophy, which awards the nation’s best player who began his career as a walk-on.
“It was a very good experience,” he says about traveling to Arkansas for the Dec. 9 Burlsworth Trophy award ceremony. Oregon linebacker Bryce Boettcher won it. “It's a first-class production, a first-class event.”
IU’s 38-15 November loss at Ohio State in front of a crowd of 106,000, coming after a program-best 10-0 start, might have been the best thing to have happened to the Hoosiers, Carpenter says.
“It opened our eyes. It was a humbling experience. The game didn’t go the way we wanted, but playing in that environment and having that experience will help us in terms of the crowd noise, handling our emotions. It will be good for us.”
So will IU’s first experience with road adversity, Carpenter adds, when it fell behind 10-0 at Michigan State, its first deficit of any kind after opening the season with eight straight blow-out wins and then scoring the game’s final 47 points.
“That was a chance to see how we’d respond, and we came back strong,” he says.
Carpenter and the Hoosier defense will face a dominating Notre Dame offense that thrives on the run behind dual-threat quarterback Riley Leonard, who has rushed for 721 yards and 14 touchdowns, and passed for 2,092 yards and 16 TDs, as well as tailbacks Jeremiyah Love (948 yards, 15 touchdowns) and Jadarian Price (651, 7).
“It's a well-rounded group,” Carpenter says. “Their running backs are very talented. Their quarterback can really run it, too. They have a young, but a good O-line. All around, they're just a good team.”
So are the Hoosiers, he adds. They’ve believed that since Cignetti assembled this group last winter and pushed his win-now message.
“Before, it was internal,” Carpenter says, “but now the whole country has seen what we can do, what Coach Cig portrays and what everyone thinks of him and how we play.
“This was a goal we set at the beginning of the season. It’s going to be a good experience for us.”