Worst to First: How Indiana rewrote its history and won a national championship

On Dec. 1, 2023, a 62-year-old head coach from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stood inside the Indiana Team Room in Bloomington, sporting a gray suit and a crimson-colored tie, and spoke with the certainty of someone unafraid of disbelief.

Curt Cignetti did not hedge. He did not soften the message. At his introductory press conference, he offered a promise, delivered with his now-familiar matter-of-fact bravado, that sounded audacious given where Indiana football stood at the time.

“We’re going to change the culture, the mindset, the expectation level, and improve the brand of Indiana Hoosier football,” Cignetti said. “There will be no self-imposed limitations on what we can accomplish.”

On Monday night, Cignetti delivered took down Miami 27-21 and stamped an exclamation point on the greatest year the program has ever seen.

At Indiana, a place shaped by decades of football futility, the words landed loudly and skeptically.

When Cignetti arrived, Indiana carried 713 all-time losses, the most of any program in college football. The Hoosiers had long been the sport’s punchline. As recently as early November, that distinction still belonged to them.

Losses layered upon losses, stretching across generations, shaping expectations and capping dreams before they ever had a chance to rise.

“No, never. Never in my wildest dreams,” Mark Cuban said when asked if he thought a title was possible. “Every now and then, we’d get a blip and we’d be OK, but we couldn’t sustain it. But now to be in the championship game is unbelievable.”

Two months after Northwestern passed Indiana for the most losses in FBS history, the Hoosiers are national champions.

“I think it’s already one of the great stories of all time,” ESPN’s Sean McDonough said Saturday. “Not just in college football, but in American sports.”

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It was the final punctuation on a season defined not by fleeting moments, but by dominance sustained. The Hoosiers spent the past five months dismantling opponents with a consistency and precision that redefined the program’s ceiling.

The title arrived 780 days after athletic director Scott Dolson made the hire of a lifetime, betting that Indiana football did not need to accept its past as a permanent condition.

The numbers confirmed what the eye already knew. Indiana is now 27-2 over the past two seasons under Cignetti, with the only losses coming against Ohio State and Notre Dame — the two teams that played for last year’s national championship.

Indiana did not win 27 games across the final five years of the previous regime, even with bowl appearances in 2019 and 2020.

“This is unprecedented for Indiana,” ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said.

For the Hoosiers, this championship belongs to more than the players who lifted the trophy Monday night.

It belongs to the 2024 team that laid the foundation and walked so the 2025 team could run. It belongs to every player who wore cream and crimson before them, dating back to the program’s inception in 1887, including the all-time greats who starred at Indiana, carried teams on their backs and still never reached a stage like this.

It belongs to those who were excellent in eras that offered no reward for excellence.

Monday night’s win over Miami and the Hoosiers’ rise to the top of the sport also forces an unavoidable question. Where does this Indiana team belong in the sport’s annals?

“I didn’t think after the 2019 LSU team we would see another team like that for a long time, maybe ever,” McDonough said. “Indiana is right there with that.”

This season also delivered moments that will live forever. Omar Cooper’s gravity-defying catch at Penn State. The Big Ten Championship win over Ohio State, Indiana’s first outright conference title in 80 years. A Rose Bowl return for the first time since 1968, capped by a 38-3 dismantling of Alabama. The Peach Bowl victory over Oregon, punctuated by D’Angelo Ponds’ first-play pick-six that will live in Indiana football lore.

All of it led to Monday night.

“Looking at the success from this season, it’s everything,” running back Roman Hemby said. “Those are accomplishments I’ll be able to tell my kids and my family about one day.”

“This team is special,” linebacker Aiden Fisher added. “Being a part of this team with these coaches and these players has been everything to me.”

Since taking over the job, Cignetti never flinched. Not when he inherited the losses. Not when the doubts persisted. Not when history pressed down.

“Success brings belief, which brings confidence and more success,” Cignetti said.

On Monday night in Miami, Indiana overcame the final hurdle.

Indiana claimed its first national championship in football, a triumph forged through more than a century of losing, built on belief and sealed in history.

A victory for the glory of old — and new — IU.

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