Indiana completes the single greatest turnaround in college football history and caps a perfect season in CFP title game thriller over Miami

Fernando Mendoza leaps. On fourth-and-4 from the Miami 12, the IU offensive line delivers an opening and Indiana’s quarterback, a hometown Miami kid, powers through Hurricane defenders, bounces off a defender’s hit at the four, spins, and hurls himself arms extended across the line.

The ballsy play call with 9 minutes left and the Fernando touchdown run are now the stuff of legend. That one play defines everything Curt Cignetti has built in going 27-2 in two years at Indiana.

Mendoza’s touchdown pushes IU ahead by two scores and they hang on to win over Miami, 27-21 in Hard Rock Stadium, the Hurricanes’ home field. The Hoosiers finish 16-0, national champions.

The losingest program in college football history just completed one of the greatest turnarounds in sports. Once again, the Hoosier fanbase flipped the stadium—a 60/40 Indiana crowd in what should have been a road/enemy atmosphere.

Two years ago, Indiana winning a national championship, in football, was unthinkable.

Imagine you love Texas, or Michigan, or whomever you’re a huge fan of just as much as you always have. But they’ve accomplished little to nothing for your entire life, no titles. (Just 13 winning seasons in the last 50 — two of which just occurred.)

Yet you still care. You still attend games. This was IU football.

Cignetti took the most improbable path to joining college football’s exclusive club. Nobody else just walks away from an Alabama program fresh off a national championship to take the head coaching job at Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

His journey from IUP to Elon to James Madison, and finally to Indiana, fuels new discussion about ambition and vision in college football. He chose the road less traveled, bet on himself at every turn, and won. In doing so, he has reshaped what’s possible in the sport and forever altered the trajectory of the Hoosiers, who are here to stay because of 2025-2026 and their newfound momentum in recruting, retention, development and belief.

Back in November 2024, I wrote about Cignetti’s approach.

He built his foundation with the core group of battle-tested veteran transfers from James Madison, fortified it with critical arrivals like Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza, and surrounded them with one of the sport’s best coaching staffs – JMU loyalists joined by former Falcons QB coach Chandler Whitmer. This staff lives in film rooms, knowing precisely which traits Cignetti values and how to squeeze maximum production from every player rather than chasing raw talent.

Cignetti was at 62 shooting his shot after so many years at the lower levels. He seized the moment when Indiana finally abandoned decades of mediocrity and opened its checkbook. Billionaire booster Mark Cuban, an Indiana alumnus, has observed that Cignetti thrives precisely when doubters write him off. His players, many overlooked or rated low coming out of high school, also play with that same “chip on their shoulder” mentality.

Monday night presented Indiana’s toughest test, and while it wasn’t always pretty IU nailed the exam. After IU steamrolled Alabama on New Year’s Day and Oregon a week later by a staggering 94-25 margin across both playoff games, Miami forced the Hoosiers into a grinding, old-school battle — four quarters of trench warfare where nothing came easy.

The message I examined this past November proved prophetic: belief precedes execution. Indiana believed from the start. They executed every week.

IU’s perfect 16-0 season means there’ve been three straight Big Ten national champions. The last three champs hail from a tight, 250-mile radius around Ann Arbor, Columbus and now Bloomington. (Can’t believe I am typing that.)

Cignetti might go down already as the greatest hire in college football history for what he has accomplished. Yet don’t expect complacency. He chases perfection too obsessively to let slip. It’s the characteristic most closely reminiscent of his former boss in Tuscaloosa, Nick Saban, who famously turned the page after each of his seven championships, as if he hadn’t just won at all.

The man who hired Cig is IU AD Scott Dolson, who began as a student manager under Bobby Knight. Dolson told me, “I don’t have the words to even come close to expressing how amazing this has been.”

MY IU ARTICLES – A RECAP

The journey started during the 2024 regular season (a history/breakdown of what it’s like to grow up following the nation’s losingest college football program). 

Indiana’s rise continued through a perfect 10-0 start and defeat of perennial power Michigan. 

IU’s 2024 season accelerated into history with a 66-0 annihilation of Purdue to end the regular season at 11-1. The greatest Indiana Hoosiers football team (to that point) had earned a CFP berth, and kept proving doubters wrong.

Indiana’s new era picked up right where the ’24 season left off, with a dominant October 2025 win at Oregon.

Mendoza’s finest hour arrived when it mattered most – trailing by four, 87 yards to go with 1:50 left and no timeouts at Penn State, a place where IU had never won. Then Mendoza had his Heisman moment. (After Monday’s championship performance against Miami, his throw and Omar Cooper’s tightrope catch at PSU became Fernando’s SECOND-best moment.)

First time in 37 seasons, they outworked Ohio State, winning the B1G Championship in Indy on December 6.

They owned Bama in Pasadena. Now they own college football.

Monday night in Miami, the Hoosiers flipped the stadium, the script, and now the entire sport.

To those who say of college NIL economics, “Oh, so all you do now is just write a check and you win”… Nope. 

 You still need the right people. You still must plan and execute… Work together… *Believe.*

Anybody can write a check. Anybody could have hired Coach Curt Cignetti. 

Indiana did it.

HOO HOO HOO!!