My first impression of Curt Cignetti was, honestly, that he was a man way in over his head.
The first time I saw him, I was a college senior sitting in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall reporting on a relatively successful Indiana men's basketball team. At that point, in my three-and-a-half years as a Hoosier, I'd seen a significant amount of athletic success on campus; most notably, the Indiana women's basketball team made it to the NCAA Tournament in three consecutive years and the renowned Indiana men's soccer team made it to two NCAA Men's College Cup finals in three years (there was a running joke that Indiana soccer was the "real" football team).
Because I'd also seen four years of Indiana football — or rather, at some moments, not seen for favor of woefully refreshing the ESPN app for score updates — and was simply just apathetic toward the whole thing. Indiana was not a football school or, for that matter, a football state.
So, when Cignetti got on the microphone at Assembly Hall that December night and riled up the crowd with his "{insert Big Ten team here} sucks" rallying cry, I sat in the press section, surrounded by cheering fans, and thought, "Okay, prove it."
And really, it wasn't hard to justify feeling that way when one of my core memories of Indiana football was getting heatstroke and witnessing the Micah McFadden controversy at that game against Cincinnati at Memorial Stadium. You know the one.
For a jaded fanbase such as Indiana's, that seemed to be the general sentiment. Cignetti's confidence was refreshing (albeit perhaps a little off-putting for some) and his brashness was exactly what Indiana football needed in order to start fresh. Some people were all in on Cignetti, but most of us held out for fear of getting our hopes up only to be let down again. After all, what could anyone really do to turn around the losingest program in college football history? There's no way to truly fix that, right?
We'll just have to wait and see, we thought. Wait and see. Cignetti was thinking the same thing.
***
Somehow, absurdly, Lil Uzi Vert may have summed up the 2025-26 Indiana football team in the best and most concise way possible.
"It's like a dream that I didn't have, and then I had it, and then it became true," the rapper said during an interview on the sidelines before Indiana and Miami faced off in the 2026 CFP National Championship. "It was my dream before my dream even happened. Shoutout Mendoza."
The context here: Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza extended an invitation to Lil Uzi — his favorite rapper — to attend the national title game if the Hoosiers made it. And so, Lil Uzi arrived at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami dressed head-to-toe in Indiana apparel, with a Mendoza jersey, fervently supporting the No. 1 team in the country.
Sure.
If you told any Indiana fan just a part of that scenario even just two years ago, they would have kindly said you were off your rocker. Even now, it feels surreal. But two years ago, Indiana fans just wanted to finish the year with a winning record and maybe, maybe make a bowl game.
Indiana fans didn't dream of a national championship because they didn't know they could.
But a no-nonsense coach, an endearing nerd of a quarterback and a group under-recruited and overlooked players made the impossible not just possible, but achievable. They made history with their perfect 16-0 season and first-ever national championship, and they made people believe.
The Hoosiers made people believe in the value of loyalty — just ask the JMU coaches and players who followed Cignetti to Indiana, and the Indiana players who stuck around through the changes. They made people believe in the importance of hard work and selflessness — just ask Aiden Fisher and Elijah Sarratt how many hours of film they watched every week.
They made people believe that Indiana football, who had been discounted, overlooked and forgotten about for decades, could become one of the most successful college football programs in the history of the sport. They made Indiana fans care more about football than basketball. And if that's possible, well, isn't anything?
***
When Edgerrin James arrived in Indianapolis in 1999, fresh off being selected No. 1 overall by the Colts in the 1999 NFL Draft, the Florida native just saw basketball hoops. They hung on barns, they stood in driveways, they were worn down and well-loved. They represented everything the state of Indiana was about. Whether it in was taking place in a small-town gym in the middle of nowhere or in Assembly Hall, basketball was king.
It always had been, and it seemed like it probably always would be.
"When you first get to Indiana, the one thing I noticed when I got there was every house had a basketball court outside their house," James recalled. "It was strictly basketball."
James' arrival ignited a period of success for the Colts that began with a 13-3 season in 1999 and culminated in a Super Bowl victory in 2006; even though James was not part of that Super Bowl team, Colts Owner Jim Irsay still sent him a championship ring. And with that early 2000s team of James, Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, Dwight Freeney and Reggie Wayne (just to name a few) the tides began to turn.
"It instantly turned into a football state," James said. "We did some great things. The whole state gravitated toward the football aspect and they added to their repertoire, so to speak. Indiana does basketball and football now."
20 years later, those words once again ring true — arguably, even more so. With that Super Bowl, sports fans around Indiana got a taste of what a good football team could do for a city and a state, and they wanted that again. Now, they got it, even if it wasn't quite in the way they envisioned.
But to be fair, no one could have ever envisioned this.
James and Wayne were among the Miami alumni at Monday's championship game, and while their alma mater didn't come out on top, even they couldn't deny just how special the 2025-26 Indiana Hoosiers were.
"I think they got that bug," James said. "Once you got that football bug and you start understanding the game and what it does for the city, what it does for the people, what it does for the kids – it's something that's pretty much contagious. I think Indiana has that football bug now. They love football, they love what we've done with the Colts and what the Colts have been doing from then up until now, and it's spread around the whole state. So Indiana's not a basketball state. It's a sports (state) and football has really planted its feet in that state."
And so, as the red and white confetti fluttered onto the field at Hard Rock Stadium — the same place the Colts won Super Bowl XLI — the state of Indiana once again made its mark on football history.
***
But now, we come back to the age-old question: what even is a Hoosier, anyway? The school brought back the bison mascot this year, but they're the "Hoosiers," not the bison. So what does being a Hoosier mean?
Well, we might now have the clearest answer we possibly could ask for.
A Hoosier is Fernando Mendoza, who puts his body on the line to crash through defenders for a touchdown and brings his Heisman Trophy to his church. A Hoosier is Curt Cignetti, who drinks an ice-cold beer after he wins a big game and doesn't smile until the confetti falls. It's Charlie Becker, who went from a special teams player to a household name and the second coming of Alec Pierce. It's D'Angelo Ponds, who became such a staple on the Indiana defense that he got a retention pond named after him in Bloomington.
It's Mendoza's father, who doesn't stand up during any of his sons' football games and instead stays seated next to his wheelchair-bound wife, Elsa. It's the fifth-generation Indiana fan who is in tears thinking about how happy their great-grandparents would have been to see this. It's the person who is going to draw inspiration from this team of underdogs who never stopped believing. It's the little boys and girls who will go out to play football and argue over which Indiana player they'll pretend to be.
A Hoosier is anybody. A Hoosier is a champion.
