College football is starting to take notice of IU football. And it should.

Indiana football in the College Football Playoff? OK, we know it's early. Really early. But after a 3-0 start to the 2024 season and a statement of intention against UCLA in the Rose Bowl on Saturday, the Hoosiers are starting to catch people's attention.

IU is No. 19 in ESPN's updated FPI, with a projected 9-3 record and 23.4% chance to make the playoff. Remove preseason projections, and IU is No. 8, per ESPN's Bill Connelly.

Doyel: IU just made statement at Rose Bowl — Hoosiers are legit under Curt Cignetti

Insider: IU fans should clear their holiday calendars. This is a bowl team.

None of which is quite as crazy as it seems.

For the moment, anyway, Indiana is roughly what the optimistic (but hardly outlandish) preseason projection looked like: A well-coached team rebuilt around veteran transfers, with a strong defensive identity and an equally effective quarterback , chewing up a favorable schedule.

IU landed at No. 40 nationally in Connelly's full updated SP+ ranking Sunday. That's up from No. 81 in the preseason, a remarkable jump that speaks to just how efficiently the Hoosiers are washing out the lingering effects of last year.

There are more remaining opponents presently ranked behind the Hoosiers (5) than ahead of them (4) in the SP+ (although Maryland sits just three spots down). Punt John Punt, the IU football-centric analytics account, used those numbers to create a distribution of likely record outcomes, and Indiana fans will enjoy the results.

Which brings us to early Week 3 bowl projections.

CBS has Indiana in the Duke's Mayo Bowl, on Jan. 3 in Charlotte. One of ESPN's two projectors, Kyle Bonagura, forecasts the same while the other, Mark Schlabach, pins the Hoosiers to the Dec. 28 Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La.

More projections will land either Sunday night or Monday, but it's fair to say through the first quarter of the season (and thanks in part to the emphatic nature of Saturday's win ), both the computers and the experts believe Indiana will go bowling.

More than that, they're beginning to bend toward the kind of season IU has only enjoyed a small handful of times in the last 50 years. As PJP's projection above suggests, a winning record is currently more statistically likely than missing a bowl entirely, and performances are pushing the algorithm closer to the kind of regular season this program has only known a small handful of times ever.

Curt Cignetti will tell anyone who asks there's a lot more work to be done — and there is — but college football is beginning to wake up on the Hoosiers. And for good reason.

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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: College football is starting to take notice of IU football. And it should.