With added expectations, Indiana football is striving for something greater in 2025

“Complacency kills success.”

During Aiden Fisher‘s media availability at last month’s Huber’s NIL event put on by Hoosiers Connect, he shared why Indiana could be even better in 2025, and those three words explained the mentality that he and the team are using to do exactly that.

Indiana certainly lived by those words in 2024. With each passing week, and each passing win until the Hoosiers were 10-0, they had an opportunity to get complacent. It took until their 11th game for Indiana to slip up, and it slipped up again in the College Football Playoff, but when it was all said and done, Indiana completed the greatest season in its 100-plus-year history.

Now, with more expectations, the Hoosiers are looking to exceed them once again rather than simply celebrate having high expectations in the first place.

“It’s not so much of a ‘what are we going to do this year,’ you know? ‘Are we going to be good’? You know, that’s the standard now. Everybody knows that,” Fisher said.

While they’re just rhetorical questions, Fisher is reminding everyone that the questions being asked before an Indiana football season have drastically changed. From wondering about bowl eligibility to speculating if the Hoosiers can remain unbeaten, the perception of Indiana football—both locally and nationally—has changed.

Of course, Indiana held an undefeated record for a program-record amount of time, but it still resulted in an early playoff exit. While many still consider it a magical season for good reason, the Hoosiers are using their December letdown as fuel.

“With going to CFP and having a successful year, that’s not going to do anything for us this year. So, obviously, we know we’re capable of, we know what we can reach and kind of things that we’re destined for. We just got to make it happen,” Fisher said.

Fisher is right—the 11 wins secured by the Hoosiers a season ago won’t count toward a 2025 CFP berth, but the foundation those wins built will certainly make a difference. The lessons learned in both the Ohio State and Notre Dame losses will allow Indiana a chance to improve upon last season, and the Indiana linebacker agrees.

“The good part about it is there’s a lot of room for improvement, even with the solid year that we had. Obviously, in the two losses… we made mistakes in those games, but there’s just so much room for improvement,” Fisher added.

Standing next to Fisher during the media availability was Elijah Sarratt, Indiana’s go-to wide receiver, who shared similar thoughts as his All-American teammate.

“We had a good group last year, but, yeah, of course, we’re trying to improve from the team that we were last year,” Sarratt said.

He added that he and the team are looking to repeat the success from a year ago, but build upon it by fixing the mistakes found in Indiana’s two losses, just like how Fisher explained it.

“We want to do the same things we did last year and improve on the things that we didn’t do,” Sarratt said.

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In order build upon its success, Indiana had to dip into the transfer portal and replace its departing key pieces. Sarratt made sure to mention this, as he explained that even with the skilled returners has, the Hoosiers will be able to improve due to transfer additions.

“We’ve brought in a lot of winners” Sarratt said, giving Indiana fans hope that this group could be even better than the last year.

For Fisher and Sarratt—both returners from last year’s Indiana team and former James Madison Dukes—they understand that Curt Cignetti‘s teams, wherever they may be, are always built on being hungry for more.

“You get complacent, you get fat and happy, and you’re gonna be right back at the bottom where you started,” Fisher said.

He added that in order to never get complacent, it’s important to understand where the journey started. For him, Sarratt and many others, it was at JMU. But for the Indiana fans, the start of the transformation was an incredibly disappointing campaign before Cignetti and his staff arrived.

“Make sure we know where we started from, which is that 3-9 when we got here, wasn’t very good, and making sure we never even get close to touching that again,” Fisher said.

While simply avoiding a losing season seems like a small task compared to what Indiana did last season, remembering what Hoosier football used to be is important in realizing just how different expectations are going into 2025.

Despite all the added expectations, increased buzz around the program, and the doubters ready to declare the 2024 season a fluke, Fisher, Sarratt and the rest of the Hoosiers will avoid complacency like their lives depend on it.

While some have said that Indiana has evolved from hunters to the hunted, that couldn’t be further from the truth. As explained by Fisher and Sarratt at Huber’s Winery, if the Hoosiers don’t get comfortable, they’ll remain as dangerous as they were a year ago—with an opportunity to get even better this time around.

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