EUGENE, Ore. – They don’t want to hear it in Columbus or Miami or Tuscaloosa, or any other high-rent locale in college football.
They’ll laugh at the absurdity of it all in Athens and Norman and Baton Rouge. But there’s no denying it now.
Indiana, long the armpit of college football, is as good as any team in the nation.
Read that again: as good as any in the nation.
‘We’re not a one-hit wonder,’ said Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza.
If you didn’t believe it before, you better start embracing it now.
It took Indiana coach Curt Cignetti one season to produce the best record in 126 years of Hoosiers football. It may only take another to earn the school’s first No. 1 ranking.
If the annihilation of Illinois in September didn’t do it, the meticulous 30-20 punishing exclamation point of a win over of No. 2 Oregon removed all doubt. The basketball school that has lost more football games than any other program in NCAA history, has this pigskin thing figured out.
‘The confidence we have right now, it’s hard to describe,’ said Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher. ‘We were the punching bags of the Big Ten. This program is in a really good spot right now.’
The striking transformation, from caterpillar to scorpion in only 19 games (17 wins) under Cignetti, has been utterly remarkable.
Indiana has done it with a modern day Steve Spurrier offensive savant as a head coach, whose fearless personality has become Indiana’s. Whose cocksure attitude and bravado look a whole lot like another guy from years past who once tossed a chair on the floor at Assembly Hall — whose big and bombastic personality was the story we couldn’t avoid and ignore.
Welcome to Indiana football, everyone. Loud and proud, and with enough talent and coaching to kick the ever-loving Knight out of you in your building.
They raced down to the field at Autzen Stadium, a couple of thousand Crimson-clad Indiana fans who made the long trek from the Midwest ― and really, from the hinterlands of the sport after decades of pulling up the very end of the rear. They stormed the home team’s field, a wave of emotion and celebration for the greatest win in school history.
Some laughed, some cried. All of them hugged with anyone they could get their hands on.
Who-Who-Who? Hoo-siers!
‘I really felt our team was in a good place, most important, our mindset,’ Cignetti said. ‘We believed we could make it happen.’
Because what would make anyone think the program that had one win in 73 all-time games against Top five teams (and had lost 46 straight), would be the one salting away a victory in the closing minutes?
What would make anyone think the team that lost both games of significance last season — to the two teams that played in the national flipping championship game, by the way — would do anything other than fold after Mendoza threw a pick-six early in the fourth quarter and Oregon somehow tied a game it had no business being in?
Then a funny happened along the way to Indiana playing the role of years past: the Hoosiers peeled off a 12-play, 75-yard drive that included three third-down conversions, and finished it with a dart from Mendoza to Elijah Sarratt from the Oregon-8. On third down.
‘It’s about being resilient with an indomitable will that can’t be defeated,’ Cignetti said.
It wasn’t just that Indiana traveled across the country to win this thing (see, James Franklin, it really does happen), it’s the way the Hoosiers did it. They stood straight and traded blows with the defending Big Ten champions, the team that hadn’t lost in the regular season since 2023.
The Hoosiers absorbed a pick-six when they had complete control of the game. They survived numerous pre-snap penalties brought about from the raucous crowd, and converted critical third downs.
And they got defensive stops over and over when they needed it most. Oregon’s four offensive drives in the fourth quarter: punt, interception, interception, end of game.
The Ducks, who were averaging 47 points and more than 500 yards a game, ran 15 plays in the fourth quarter for a measly 27 yards.
‘The defense was huge,’ Cignetti said. ‘Just took it to them in the second half.’
None of this should be surprising if you’ve paid attention from the day Cignetti was hired, and declared, ‘I win, Goggle me.’ And has since won like no one ever has in Bloomington.
Indiana has made this happen with a staff that has figured out the transfer portal better than any other. It’s not just who you collect from the grab bin/money pit of the sport, it’s how they fit and develop within your program.
Like Mendoza, lost with California in the ACC, now playing like the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NFL draft. Officials were allowing tight coverage, and his ball placement and velocity was nearly perfect.
Or Fisher, virtually unknown at James Madison, now the most impactful linebacker in the Big Ten. He and the rest of the IU front seven constantly harassed Oregon quarterback Dante Moore, sacked him six times and all but eliminated the Ducks’ run game.
Or tailback Roman Hemby, a talented runner lost on some truly average Maryland teams, giving Cignetti the one thing it lacked in 2024: a bruising, dynamic runner who can move the pile and get tough yards — and break tackles in space and wreck a game plan. He had two big touchdown runs and kept getting critical yards when the offense needed it most.
‘This is a perfect depiction of why I came here,’ Hemby said.
As the final minute slowly crawled off the clock and the stadium was all but empty with the exception of the Crimson wave heading to the field, Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson stood on the sideline and tried to make sense of this unthinkable ride.
He talked about belief and alignment and buy-in and everything else you’d expect the guy who runs the athletic department to say. Then he finally just gave in.
‘Coach Cignetti is a bit of unicorn,’ Dolson said, almost sheepishly. ‘Everything he told me in our (job) interview that he said was going to happen, he has done.’
If last season was the breakout of Indiana football, this season could be the knockout.
There’s no avoiding it now, everyone.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
