The Howard Bison visit the Indiana Hoosiers on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026 at 12 p.m. ET at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Indiana, and the matchup arrives with Indiana carrying the weight of a No. 5 ranking and a 56.5-point spread.
That line is the first thing that makes this game worth a second look. Indiana opened 1-0 by beating North Texas 52-16, while Howard is 1-1 after a 21-28 loss to Richmond on Sept. 5, so the teams arrive in very different places even before kickoff. DraftKings listed Indiana at -100000 on the moneyline and Howard at +5000, with the total set at 64.5, which tells you how strongly the market expects the Hoosiers to control the game.
Indiana’s opener is the reason the ranking feels real, not decorative. Josh Hoover went 13 of 16 for 231 yards and four touchdowns without an interception, Turbo Richard scored twice, and Charlie Becker turned 64 receiving yards into two touchdowns. That kind of clean, fast production is what pushed Indiana to No. 5, and it fits a passing attack that produced 46 touchdowns through the air last season, the most in the NCAAFB in the 2025 regular season.
Howard has not been empty on offense, which is why the Bison are not walking into Bloomington as a pure placeholder. Scroggins threw for 424 yards and four touchdowns while adding 88 yards on the ground in the opener, and Osborne has already posted a 101-yard, one-touchdown game this season. But the passing game has completed just 44.6% of its throws through two games, the ninth-lowest mark in college football in the 2026 regular season, and that kind of inconsistency can disappear quickly against a top-five opponent that just allowed nothing close to a shootout in its first game.
Howard also allowed 28 points in the loss to Richmond, which sharpens the question behind Saturday’s kickoff. Indiana does not need the game to be close to validate its start, but Howard needs cleaner execution through the air if it is going to make the spread look absurd instead of merely large. The Bison and Hoosiers are set to find out at noon ET, and the first quarter should say plenty about whether Howard can trade blows long enough to make Indiana work for the full 60 minutes.
