WWe live in upside down times. Kim Kardashian calls for prison reform as the US government posts cartoons promoting mass deportation and detention. Dave Chappelle – flaws aside – is more confident in interpreting the news than CBS’s Tony Dokoupil. The selection committee behind the College Football Playoff has somehow orchestrated a convincing tournament without inciting the usual torrent of backlash, and the team that ultimately hoists the Cup could end up being that. Indiana. And no, that’s not a typo.
In case it’s not obvious, Indiana is basketball Country – Birthplace of Larry Bird, home of the NBA’s Pacers, and the inspiration behind the Hoosiers Gene Hackman. Top-tier campus research, the stormy hardwood reign of Bobby Knight, and Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban are Indiana University’s claims to fame; Football rarely enters the chat. Before the NFL Colts infiltration Hailing from Baltimore and woven into the fabric of Indiana sports, Hoosiers fans spent the football season rallying around Notre Dame, a national brand that happened to be located in the state, and kept their true colors for college basketball.
“I’ve seen more of Indiana [football] “The games in the empty stands I can’t count,” says Eddie R. Cole, who was a graduate student at Indiana University before becoming a professor of education and history at UCLA. “When I look at pictures from 20 years ago, it’s as if, Were we there? Why were we there? I have no memory of ever purchasing a ticket.
Over nearly 140 football seasons, the Hoosiers have suffered 715 losses — the most for any top-ranked program until Northwestern edged Indiana to the bottom late last year. Of the program’s 29 former head coaches, only seven have career winning records. It is worth noting that the shortlist does not include Lee Corso, a talkative showman who later became a much-loved actor. Wearing a mascot head On ESPN’s College GameDay set; Or Sam Wyche, who had just three wins in 1983 before folding weeks after a season-ending loss to Purdue (the middle child in the state’s three-way football rivalry) in the NFL.
But in a development some might be tempted to call a miracle, the Hoosiers will face 10th-seeded Miami at Hard Rock Stadium (the Hurricanes’ home stadium) for a chance to win their first national title in school history — not because the selection committee felt sorry for them or because the number of eligible teams tripled or because of the stroke of Donald Trump’s pen. No, the Hoosiers actually belongs to. Those who were in last place are now in first place — in the AP Poll, in the playoffs, in the football nightmare. Some say this season’s Hoosiers could become the best college football team ever, surpassing Joe Burrow’s team. 2019 LSU Tigers.
Fernando Mendoza, Indiana The devout midfielder recently recalled the urgency and intensity his defensive teammates brought to their first training sessions together of the summer; he He thought to himself, Either this is the best defense in the country, or I’m not as good as I thought I was.
The Hoosiers enter Monday’s championship game having won all 15 of their games by 31.1 points, and having beaten the top five opponents on their schedule by an average of more than two touchdowns. They have reached this point after eliminating defending national champion Ohio State in the Big Ten title game in November, dispensing with 18-time national champion Alabama in the playoff quarterfinals, and crushing conference rival Oregon in the semifinals.
All the while, Hoosiers fans followed every step of their postseason demolition march, sweeping neutral courts in the playoffs in crimson and cream apparel and deafening support. At the end of the game against Alabama, as rose petals fell to punctuate the Hoosiers’ victory, Cole stood inside the Rose Bowl — still three-quarters full of Indiana fans — and thought, There are more fans here than our stadium can hold. “This whole season has been a daydream,” he says. “The truth is beyond me.”
if Rudy Notre Dame It was a charming underdog story, and Indiana’s rise is the stuff of science fiction. The schedule override occurred when the Hoosiers hired Curt Cignetti, Nick Saban’s black sheep August training tree. Cignetti was part of Saban’s inaugural staff at Alabama from 2007 through 2010, coaching receivers and handling recruiting for the Crimson Tide, helping the team win a national championship with a star-studded class that included Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram II and future NFL All-Pro Julio Jones.
But while fellow assistants Jim McIlwain and Kirby Smart quickly parlayed their success under Saban into prestigious head coaching positions at Florida and Georgia, respectively, Cignetti’s only coaching opportunities came at the lower levels — and he worked there for 11 seasons before Indiana hired the 64-year-old in late 2023 to succeed James Madison, where he would lay the foundation for their team. Likewise unlikely First playoff game of the year. In 2024, Cignetti led the Hoosiers to an 11-2 mark and a surprise playoff appearance with Notre Dame, the eventual runner-up.
Despite the dramatic turnaround, the media remained skeptical of Cignity’s ability to maintain momentum. The suspicion wasn’t entirely unfounded given that 2024 was Indiana’s first double-digit winning season in history and only its fourth finish above .500 since Dan Coyle, another proud Hoosier, was vice president. However, Cignetti, who holds a grudge unblemished in the knight’s mold and has never endured a losing season as a head coach, takes a beating when Indiana’s surprise arrival is dismissed as a fluke.
“A lot of that negative stuff in the media fueled the returning players from that team,” Cignetti said in a news conference before the semifinal win over Oregon. “We added some real key pieces, and the key piece is right here on my left.”
He was nodding at Mendoza, a Miami native And a productive start at Cal before joining Cignetti’s Juggernaut this year and becoming the only Heisman Trophy winner in Hoosiers history and the first Cuban-American to ever receive the award. While established powers assemble highly regarded young recruits in hopes of winning over raw talent, Cignetti fills his rosters with mercenaries.Super seniors” who win with strong fundamentals and sound execution. It is no surprise that Indiana’s new way of doing business in the pay-for-play era of college sports has given rise to Jealous whispers And allegations of fraud. In this rogue reality, this reads as a compliment.
Ultimately, the protests provided additional incentive. It was not lost on Alabama fans that Saban’s Black Sheep assistant beat this year’s team and accomplished Oregon coach Dan Lanning (a former Alabama graduate assistant) to set up a showdown with Miami – another program reborn under former Alabama assistant, Mario Cristobal.
Longtime college football observers may feel the nostalgic temptation to frame this championship game as a battle between mutants in the heartland and “Convicts“On the coast. But as the US government’s role in higher education shifts from teacher to hall monitor, the reality on the ground is stark. In Indiana, pro-Palestinian protests have attracted state police With guns on rooftopswhile coverage preceded the poor rating of freedom of expression at the university Reducing short-term financing To the printed version of the 158-year-old student paper.
Meanwhile, in Miami – also known as Marco Rubio Alma mater at the Faculty of Law – Respected neuroscience professor who shared a critical tweet about Charlie Kirk He was forced to resign amid conservative protestsWhile the university was quick to comply with the executive order issued in 2025 Targeting race and gender studies (among other edicts against “vigilance”), wiping out DEI websites and renaming affinity organizations where students called out the school for betraying the much-touted “school.”Culture of belonging“.
Indiana and Miami illustrate the decline of higher education amid conservative pressures during the second Trump era, an idea that would have been unthinkable years ago. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Trump himself fail in Monday night’s game, given his habit of stealing the spotlight from major American sporting events and the Hard Rock’s relative proximity to Mar-a-Lago. (It’s a rare home game for him.)
“This is the great American story in many ways, a walking, talking contradiction,” says Cole, a UCLA professor and author of The Campus Color Line, a history of the role university presidents played in shaping 20th-century civil rights reforms on and off campus. “On the one hand, you have great teams to support. On the other hand, you are away from the questionable decisions that happen in universities.”
Since its inception, college football has asked fans to divide — how much can you love a team without fully embracing the organization behind it? In these volatile times, Indiana’s astonishing rise makes old logic seem like a sudden reversal.