"But if you keep your nose down in life and keep working, anything is possible..."

Congratulations to the Indiana University Hoosiers for winning their first EVER National Championship in college football last night!  They finished a perfect 16-0 season by beating a very tough Miami Hurricanes football team.  The Hoosiers won by beating traditional football powerhouses Ohio State (in the Big Ten championship game), Alabama, Oregon, and Miami.  

What is so unbelievable is that Indiana University has been for many years known as a basketball school (as Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Gay wrote today, "This was a basketball school that played football as a way to get to the basketball season"), winning the NCAA National Championship in 1940, 1953, 1976, 1981, and 1987.  The football program has been the proverbial doormat, losing 715 games in their history, the second most in FBS history and just one game less than Northwestern University.  IU Head Coach Curt Cignetti came to IU just two years ago, following the firing of then Head Coach Tom Allen.  Coach Cignetti inherited a team that had finished 3-9 in Coach Allen's final year.  Shortly after his hiring, he was asked how he was selling his vision for the program to potential recruits and transfers.  He replied, "I win. Google me." 

The Hoosiers finished Cignetti's first season in 2024 ranked number 10 overall with an 11–2 record, but their season ended with a loss to Notre Dame in the first round of the 2024–25 College Football Playoff (CFP).  They would not be denied in Cignetti's second season, finishing the Big Ten season with an undefeated record before defeating the defending national champions Ohio State Buckeyes to enter the CFP as the number one ranked team in the country (their first ever number one ranking).  Along the way, quarterback Fernando Mendoza would win the Heisman Trophy, the first in Indiana University's history.

Coach Cignetti is famously stoic on the sidelines and during post-game interviews.  Not this time.  During post-game interviews with ESPN sideline report Molly McGrath, Cignetti said, "Let me tell you, we won the national championship at Indiana University, it can be done.  I’m so happy for our fans. Words can’t describe it."

McGrath asked what he was feeling at that moment.  Cignetti replied, "What’s this moment like for me?  Back when I was waxing the staff table at IUP, Thanksgiving weekend and school was shut down for the playoffs, did I ever think something like this was possible? Probably not. But if you keep your nose down in life and keep working, anything is possible."

Amazing performance by an amazing football team.  Just to put it all in perspective, the last time a college football team won the national championship and finished an undefeated 16-0 was 1894, when Yale's football team did it.  Cignetti called his team's season "probably one of the greatest sports stories of all time," before ending, "but it's all because of these guys and the staff."  Congratulations to the Indiana University Hoosiers, National Champions!