In 130 years of playing football IU has started the season 4-0 a grand total of SIX times.
Let that sink in,almost seems impossible.
Hopefully it will be 7 after Saturday.
Unless Wiki's lying, I'm counting 7: 1898; 1910; 1967; 1985; 1986; 1990 (Why did we fire Mallory, again?); 2015. It's interesting 1945's not there---the tie game was the 2nd game that year
In any event, I don't think it's quite as surprising if you consider that the practice of playing 3-4 (generally) weak NC games didn't happen from around 1925 through 2000 or so.........look at who we started with from 1907 and each 10th year thereafter:
1907:: Depauw, Chicago, IU Alumni
1917: Franklin, Wabash, St. Louis
1927: UK, Chicago, Minnesota
1937: Centre, Minnesota, Illinois
1947: Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa
1957: MSU, ND, Iowa
1967: UK, Kansas, Illinois
1977: Michigan, OSU, MSU
1987: Rice, UK, Missouri
1997: N. Carolina, BSU, UK
2007: ISU, W. Michigan, Akron
2017: OSU, VA, FIU (Ga, Southern)
Until the mid-1980s or so so we were just as likely to start the season with a Big 10 opponent as not. Also NC games weren't necessarily bunched. It wasn't until this century or so that we started playing 3 consecutive NC games to start the season, followed by a Big 10 team. Our schedules since 2000 or so have, as a very general matter, been the weakest we've played since the mid-1920s. From about 1925-1980, you weren't going to go 4-0 to start the season unless you were a top 10 level team.