The morning after a national championship is usually reserved for the snooze button. Not for champions.
Tuesday morning in Bloomington, Indiana proved that life as a national champion isn’t about rest—it’s about responsibility. Four upperclassmen, some clearly worse for wear, took the stage under bright lights and relentless questioning. They were asked, once again, how a program long synonymous with losing became the first 16-0 champion since the 1890s.
The night had been long. It began with cigar smoke in the locker room, detoured through celebratory adult beverages in Miami, and left a residue of fatigue that no one could entirely shake.
“I heard one of them didn’t even get to bed yet,” Indiana coach Curt Cignetti deadpanned. “Great day yesterday. Good to be here today at the winner’s podium. Every day brings new things that need to be done and new challenges.”
The only empty seat belonged to the biggest star of them all. Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza arrived a few minutes later, fashionably late but reliable, his night highlighted by a 12-yard touchdown run for the ages on fourth down. Indiana can get used to this. The harder question is whether college football is ready.
The fairy tale of Indiana’s rise—from the losingest program in the FBS to undefeated national champion—will fade quickly. Soon, we’ll ask Indiana if it can do it all again. Life comes at you fast when you’re the champ.
“Perfection is impossible to attain on a consistent basis,” Cignetti said. “We’ll continue to take it one day at a time, one meeting at a time, one practice at a time and just keep improving and committing to the process and showing up prepared, trying to put it on the field and see where it takes us.”
This is a program no longer defined by sentimentality. Cignetti’s climb—from Division II to FCS to FBS and now a 27–2 start in Bloomington—demands respect.
“I think that’s called a paradigm shift,” Cignetti said. “It’s kind of like people can cling to an old way of thinking… or they can adjust to the new world, the shift of the power balance in the way college football is today.”
Translation: stop making excuses.
The sport has changed. Money entered the conversation last fall and it isn’t leaving. NIL spending pushed programs like Ole Miss and Texas Tech into the playoff. Indiana, armed with a one-of-a-kind coach, an eye for evaluation, and a new financial backbone, won the national title.
Not everyone believed this day would come. Experts talked about parity and chaos, about deep-pocketed boosters and constant transfers. Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said eight months ago, “The idea I think we’ve all gotta wrap our brain around—I don’t know if we’ll ever see an undefeated national champion again. If we do, that’s a really good team. Because it’s just so difficult.”
Indiana did it anyway. Even after losing Stephen Daley, the nation’s No. 2 player in tackles for loss, after the Big Ten Championship Game, the Hoosiers kept their roster healthy and their momentum intact.
Cignetti sees the difference clearly: “To look back at what happened to Indiana previous to us coming, 10, 20, 50 years ago, strictly lacked a commitment from the top. That’s it, plain and simple. Nothing else. And we have a commitment.”
It starts with an athletics director willing to invest. It helps to have Mark Cuban in your alumni base. But the whispers of a top-tier payroll in Bloomington were always a convenient crutch for blue-blood programs, a way to explain away decades of mediocrity. Not anymore.
Linebacker Aiden Fisher, one of seven last transfers from Cignetti’s James Madison team, put it simply: “Indiana fans and the culture around Indiana were just hungry for a winner, and they just needed the right coach and the right players to come in and flip this thing around.”
That flip began with 13 James Madison transfers last season and culminated in a roster that featured only seven former four-star recruits—the fewest ever to win a modern national title. Indiana keeps breaking the templates.
How the rest of college football responds is the next chapter.
For Cignetti, there’s no time to linger. He gave his staff Tuesday off. They return Wednesday. He flies to Houston for the Bear Bryant Award and will return to Bloomington to continue building a champion.
“Get through the month, take a little vacation in February, go down to some nice hot-weather island about a week, and then when I come back, I’ll figure out a few film projects that I think might fit next year’s team and help me grow,” Cignetti smiled.
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