Indiana's turnaround turned college football's saddest fans -- me included -- into its happiest

The date was Dec. 1, 2023. Indiana, a basketball school by legacy which hadn't been to a Final Four since 2002, was hosting Maryland in Big Ten hoops action. The Hoosiers jumped out to an 18-6 lead behind ... ah whatever. Who cares? This date went down in history when new Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti took the microphone. None of us had any clue what was about to be unleashed.

He said he's "super fired up about this opportunity." Cool. That's pretty boilerplate for a new head coach. 

"I've never taken a back seat to anybody and don't plan on starting now!" 

OK, that's aggressive, but I like it. 

"Purdue sucks!" 

HELL YEAH!

"But so do Michigan and Ohio State!"

Wait, what? Uh oh. 

Does this guy not know what job he just took? This is surely biting off far more than he can chew. Ohio State is one of the premier programs in the nation and Michigan was on its way to winning the national championship. Those are football schools with long traditions of success. Here at Indiana, our only football claim to fame is being the losingest team in FBS history. 

As an Indiana alum and lifelong IU football fan, it was easy to be outwardly fired up about his fearless demeanor, but internally there were decades worth of scar tissue that I couldn't fight off. 

This was a 62-year-old who hadn't been a head coach at a bigger job than James Madison. There wasn't some young, up-and-comer from the MAC or something? And he's bringing in 12 guys from James Madison? To compete with Michigan and Ohio State? And now he's taking shots at Michigan and Ohio State? 

It's funny now to consider that among those JMU transfers were studs like Elijah Sarratt, Kaelon Black, Mikail Kamara, D'Angelo Ponds and Aiden Fisher. It's funny now to consider any of that trepidation with just how unbelievably well Cignetti has walked the walk after talking the talk. Indiana is 26-2 since he took over with two College Football Playoff appearances, won a Big Ten title over the daunting Buckeyes, decimated Alabama and Oregon in back-to-back bowl games and is now one win away from a national championship.

The world's largest fanbase, unleashed: Indiana's crimson wave rolls toward CFP title game

John Talty

But, again, you have to remember the feelings Indiana football fans have carried for decades. 

I have way too many IU football memories to discuss here. But a game during my junior year in high school stands out. Michigan State, in Memorial Stadium in 1995, took back a punt (76 yards) and kickoff (87) for scores, not to mention getting on the board with a 59-yard touchdown run, en route to a 31-13 victory over the hapless Hoosiers. I was in attendance with dozens (OK, maybe hundreds) of others. IU would finish 2-9 that season with the finale being a 51-14 thrashing at the hands of hated rival Purdue. 

That season was the end of the Bill Mallory run of success. Through the previous season, Indiana had actually been to six bowls in a nine-year stretch with winning records in six of the previous eight years. We didn't know it at the time, but fans were relatively spoiled through that near-decade run, given what was on tap. 

From 1993 through 2014, IU went to one bowl game. One! Keep in mind, in the 11-game era, all a team had to do was beat three cupcakes non-conference and then go 3-5 in the Big Ten to qualify. In the 12-game era, for a while, there were four conference games. It was possible to go 2-6 in the Big Ten and still make a bowl. And IU still only did it one time in nearly two decades. If you weren't familiar with all of this before, just stop for a second and consider how damn near impossible it was to pull off this level of futility. That one bowl trip was a 7-6 team that lost the Insight Bowl in 2007. 

Even with back-to-back bowl games in 2015 and 2016, both of those teams lost their bowls and finished 6-7. Straight up, it was just a laughable program for decades.

Even the two-year window of success under Tom Allen was short-lived. There was an 8-4 regular season followed by a blown bowl game. I was there and spent the hours after the 2019 (played on Jan. 2, 2020) Gator Bowl with my friend lamenting that Allen must've been the only person in the stadium surprised by Tennessee's onside kick. We went, in part, because it felt like this could be the pinnacle of IU football. Yes, an 8-4 regular season with a middling bowl game loss. Again, that's how hopeless things felt for generations. The 6-1 regular-season in whatever-the-2020-season-was ended up being pretty fun, but everything fell apart the following season after a lofty preseason ranking. I had season tickets that year. What a waste. Then again, IU football fandom felt like a waste more often than not, so I didn't really give it a second thought. 

This little trip of my personal torture is all the establish the mindset before Cignetti was hired. After all the crap we'd eaten for decades, a group of my friends and I basically just were saying that we'd love to return to the Mallory days. Mind you, he never finished better than 8-3-1. His highest postseason ranking was No. 20. 

We were desperate for a prolonged stretch of something that wasn't awful. 

If someone would've asked after Allen's firing, what is your absolute, pie-in-the-sky, best-case scenario for the second year under a new coach, I would've said 8-4 and hopefully the first bowl game win since 1991. I don't think I would've believed even that was in the cards. 

Now, as you all are probably aware, the 2025 Indiana Hoosiers are 15-0 and have a chance to be the first-ever college football team to go 16-0. They are 60 minutes away vs. Miami from winning the national championship. In football. I've even heard talk they could be considered among the best college teams ever. 

What world is this?

Some of it still seems surreal. I remember wanting to be Anthony Thompson in my backyard (OK, and Neal Anderson, too -- I'm allowed to love both the Chicago Bears and IU). Thompson was on that 8-3-1 team as a junior, but the Hoosiers were 5-6 his senior year, when he was the runner-up to Andre Ware in Heisman Trophy voting. 

Indiana now has a Heisman Trophy winner in Fernando Mendoza. 

I remember the massive tailgates in the grass lot across from Memorial Stadium during my years as a student, south of 17th Street between Fess and Woodlawn. I remember sitting with a friend in an otherwise empty student section when Tim Couch was throwing his seventh touchdown against Indiana in a 49-7 Kentucky win. I remember how many times friends and I went back out to the tailgate lot at halftime and just decided to stay there instead of going back into the game because the product was so awful. Then again, there were the four years of Antwaan Randle El to watch. That was fun. He lived on my floor freshman year in the dorms (he was a hell of a nice guy, and I'm sure he still is). 'Twaan was one of the most exciting players in America. And IU still was never better than 5-6 with him. 

That 5-6 season in 2001, correctly and thankfully, was the last year for Cam Cameron, who replaced Mallory and put up five losing seasons. Then we endured Gerry DiNardo before Terry Hoeppner appeared to be a good hire but tragically died of brain cancer in 2007. Then there were Bill Lynch and Kevin Wilson and Tom Allen. 

And then came Cignetti and that speech in Assembly Hall. 

I'll never forget my first thought when the College Football Playoff expanded to 12 teams. It was something along the lines of ... 

"Hey, maybe if IU has its best year ever and everything that could possibly go right goes right, maybe we could get to see one game in the playoff!" 

That happened in 2024. It felt fluky and like a one-off. Again, there's a lot of scar tissue there.

But then 2025 unfolded. Last-second magic in Iowa, a win in Oregon, a miracle comeback at Penn State and, of course, beating Ohio State in the Big Ten championship. Remember, Mendoza got hurt on the first offensive play. I couldn't help but think something along the lines of "God would never let IU football be No. 1." But then it happened. It still felt surreal, especially seeing the CFP bracket with a "1" next to Indiana. 

Next: A 38-3 beatdown of freaking Alabama in the Rose Bowl? Get outta here. I had so many people texting me wondering what I would've said if someone told me two years ago that would happen. I have no answer. I just kept saying "surreal." By the way, this really was the first bowl win for IU since 1991. I was in seventh grade then. I'm 47-years-old now. 

Anyway, then came a turning of the, um, tide. 

Heading into the Peach Bowl against Oregon, I wasn't nervous anymore, not like before the Ohio State and Alabama games. I just felt confident. About IU. In football. What a world! Right when Ponds picked off the first pass from Oregon, my reaction was less euphoria and more a confident, "yep, here it comes."

I used to have that "here it comes" feeling in the opposite direction, as in IU is about to get blown out. What a turnaround. 

I have the same feeling heading into the National Championship game. I respect Miami. I don't think it'll be easy or a blowout necessarily. It's just that it isn't surreal anymore. I believe. I truly believe Indiana football is the best team in the country and will not fail us now. That's what this team has done. It has healed decades of scar tissue. I'm not waiting on the proverbial other shoe to fall. I'm excited to get to the celebrating. 

Those decades of scar tissue caused some of us -- despite desperately wanting to believe -- to grow concerned or even worried when Cignetti flashed that confidence in calling out Ohio State and Michigan. 

It turns out, he knew what he was doing. He was right. He called his shot. He takes a backseat to nobody. What a perfect hire.

And now, preparing to watch my school play for a national title -- in football!! -- I'm thrilled and confident. I'm no longer that fan that was, like thousands of others like me, beaten down for decades. 

Thank you, 2025 Indiana Hoosiers football team. You've changed us all. Now go finish the job of winning a national championship. In football. 

What world is this?