by The Hoosiers overwhelmed Alabama 38-3 in a Rose Bowl takeover
January 2, 2026 | The takeover started before I left Austin.
The Indiana football fanbase had seized the College Football Playoff. Standing at my AUS-LAX flight gate, the ratio of Indiana trident logos to Alabama gear was something like 12-to-1.
Hoosier fans were everywhere, starting at Bergstrom, aboard the plane, all over LAX and filling the streets of Pasadena. For a program that hadn’t seen this kind of success in multiple generations, the turnout was stunning. And cathartic.
ESPN’s Holly Rowe panned her phone across the Rose Bowl crowd. “As you can see,” she said, “this is all Indiana fans.” She wasn’t exaggerating.
This was a pilgrimage, and the Rose Bowl was ours.
Two years after sitting at the bottom, IU continued college football’s all-time turnaround by pounding Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl.
Just 25 months earlier, this team was 3-9 and without a bowl victory in more than 30 years. It all changed in November 2023 when Indiana hired Curt Cignetti, a 62-year-old lifer who arrived from James Madison.
No one would have believed it then. IU, the losingest program in college football history, goes 25-2 under ‘Cig,’ runs the table in 2025, beats No. 1 Ohio State for the Big Ten title and earns the top seed. Then it adds a Heisman-winning quarterback and a Rose Bowl rout of the Tide.
On New Year’s Day in Pasadena, the Hoosiers did not resemble Cinderella in any way. They dominated Bama in every phase.
Indiana rushed for 215 yards while holding the Crimson Tide to just 23. Fernando Mendoza, in his first game since winning the Heisman, completed 14 of 16 passes for 192 yards and three touchdowns.
Bama quarterback Ty Simpson played through a fractured rib incurred on a second quarter hit/fumble before being pulled, and the Tide’s struggles drew pointed commentary as Kirk Herbstreit described Alabama as “just existing” defensively.
Center Pat Coogan won offensive MVP, a first for a lineman in the Rose Bowl’s 112-game history. Herbstreit, who helps pick the award, wanted to give it to the entire offensive line. He was told he couldn’t. Either way it was fitting recognition for a unit that line coach Bob Bostad rates among the best he’s seen in 35 years.
Indiana had played in one Rose Bowl before, a 14-3 loss to USC in 1968. This time the Hoosiers handed Alabama the worst bowl loss in its history.
Our fans dominated as well. Memorial Stadium in Bloomington seats 53,000. The Pasadena IU contingent, roughly 70% of the Rose Bowl’s 90,000, was the largest gathering of Indiana Hoosiers fans, anywhere, ever.
I reunited with FIJI pledge brothers at the tailgate, many of whom I hadn’t seen in years, all of us delighting in the season we’d just witnessed.
IU’s Rose Bowl win began with its entrance to the stadium grounds.
On that rainy New Year’s morning, we were at a tented fraternity gathering, consuming pregame breakfast tacos and beer near the Rose Bowl’s team bus entrance/access road. When Alabama’s bus arrived, people took general notice and then went back to their conversations.
But 35 minutes later, as the IU team buses approached, everything changed.
People started walking, then running. Hundreds of them. A surge of fist-pumping Hoosier fans sprinted to greet the team. What a sight, it had to be huge for those players to see that.
With its stunning San Gabriels backdrop, the century-old Rose Bowl venue lives up to its billing. To see Indiana playing there with that kind of fan support was vindication for every disappointing season, every “wait till next year” each of us has endured over decades.
And now, time to rip off the rearview mirror. For this team and its delighted fanbase it’s now on to Atlanta, and a rematch with the Oregon Ducks this weekend in the Peach Bowl national semifinal.
I’ll see you there.
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