What Curt Cignetti has done in two seasons at Indiana, especially this one, already has many proclaiming it the best coaching feat in college football history — regardless of outcome in Monday night’s championship game — and it absolutely is.
The supporting evidence is plentiful (and has been well-told, but, yes, we’ll do it once more in a moment) and the unlikeliness of it all simply unparalleled.
Then there is the story within that story, that of Heisman Trophy-winning Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza — a two-star prospect who grew up almost literally in the backyard of Miami’s campus but got overlooked out of high school by the Hurricanes and every other Power Four program except Cal, now closing his collegiate career back in his hometown against the school he grew up rooting for, looking to win a national championship to cap a near-perfect run of playoff performances so far.
No. 1 Indiana (15-0) has certainly been the best story in the sport — and sports in general, for that matter — and deserves every kilowatt of the spotlight it’s receiving. If it was fiction, it would seem too far-fetched, but Oregon, Alabama, Ohio State and a dozen other teams can attest to how very real and remarkable it all is.
Miami (13-2) is a pretty compelling case as well, though, and that’s actually where we want to start this time in setting the stage for the teams’ national championship showdown Monday night (7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN) on the Hurricanes’ home field at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
The bottom line is college football wins regardless of what transpires over these final four quarters.
Just don’t leave it to either head coach to provide the colorful context as to why, as they shared this moment and mutually muted response when asked that very question Sunday at their joint press conference.
The “what it means” is bluntly clear if Indiana finishes off the greatest two-season turnaround in college football history and goes from being known as the program with the most losses all-time in the sport to its most captivating champion.
It also means every under-the-radar program in college football believing — and selling to its players, boosters and fans — that if it could happen there of all places, it can happen here.
That’s already the enduring impact of Cignetti’s masterpiece.
If Indiana could go from a century-plus of mostly mediocrity or worse, from 3-24 in the Big Ten over the three years before hiring a largely-unknown head coach from James Madison, compiling a roster of mostly three-star, two-star or no-star recruits and immediately reeling off a 26-2 record (with one to go), a Big Ten championship, two CFP appearances and playoff wins by 35 and 34 points over the aforementioned Crimson Tide and Ducks …
“I’m sure we’ve got some people’s attention,” Cignetti said simply of the broader impact of Indiana’s success. “… I think anything is possible with the right commitment, leadership, blueprint, plan and people.”
But how about for the Hurricanes?
This was set to be a potentially career-defining season for Miami coach Mario Cristobal, with his most talented roster in his four years back at his alma mater. The former Hurricanes offensive lineman who was part of the school’s national championship legacy as a player was now aiming to be the one to restore the once-storied program back to its previous perch atop college football (five national titles from 1983-2001) after two decades of mounting national irrelevance.
Miami’s Path To The National Championship Game
Then there is the story inside the story for Miami as well.
Quarterback Carson Beck was ready to move on from Georgia after what was, fairly or unfairly, perceived as a disappointing two-year run as a starter there, after his predecessor Stetson Bennett IV won back-to-back national championships as a far less-heralded recruit while Beck’s Bulldogs missed the then-four-team playoff his first year leading the offense and an elbow injury kept him out of the team’s playoff game (and loss) last year.
Georgia seemed content to turn the page and go all-in on Beck’s backup, Gunner Stockton, while Beck was also ready to move on — first declaring for the NFL draft before being lured to Miami for one last shot at a championship (and, sure, a whole heck of a lot of money).
The redemption narrative was all set, with Beck considered a top Heisman candidate after Miami started 5-0 and surged to No. 2 in the national rankings.
But then it just about unraveled entirely for the coach, QB and the rest of the Hurricanes.
Two losses in the span of three weeks to unranked Louisville and SMU teams, with Beck throwing 6 interceptions over those two games, took him out of the Heisman conversation entirely, only added to the perception he tried to leave behind in Georgia — that he was a good but not quite great college quarterback — and pushed Miami’s playoff hopes to the absolute brink.
“We got field rushed in Dallas over at SMU, and reality hit, and everyone on our football program saw that graphic, that edit — Miami has a 5 percent chance to make it into the postseason,” Cristobal said. “I think that’s what galvanized us. I think we realized we had to approach each and every day with being the most excited, the most energetic team on the field and that pre-snap and post-snap discipline had to be at the forefront. …
“It had to mean more to you than it did to the other side, and I think those principles just continued to push us forward.”
Miami landed at No. 18 in the initial CFP rankings that came out just after that 26-20 overtime loss to SMU had dropped it to 6-2. Worse, the Hurricanes were eight spots behind fellow 6-2 Notre Dame, which they beat 27-24 back in Week 1.
Indeed, the path to the playoff seemed bleak at best.
Cristobal seemed likely to add to a mounting and potentially defining tally of deflating late-season or simply unexpected losses that cost him potential playoff opportunities a couple times at Oregon and again last season at Miami, when defeats to unranked Georgia Tech and Syracuse in the final three weeks doomed the Hurricanes after a 9-0 start.
Beyond Cristobal, Beck was positioned to bear the brunt of the blame for falling short of expectations once more.
Instead, the sixth-year senior quarterback delivered one of the best runs of his career over the final four regular-season games, averaging 281.25 passing yards while completing 79.5% of his passes with 11 touchdowns and just 1 interception (after throwing 9 picks over the first eight games). Miami won those games by margins of 28 (over Syracuse), 34 (NC State), 17 (Virginia Tech) and 31 points (vs. then-No. 22 Pittsburgh) to climb back up the CFP rankings.
“I’m a big believer of Carson Beck,” Cristobal said. “Like him, our entire team on November 1, 2025, did not have very much positive energy surrounding them. I think Carson Beck epitomizes the ability to take an adverse situation and turn it into something not only positive but something that helps one grow and endure and become a stronger and better version of themselves. …
“He’s not caught up in personal accolades or awards. He wants to win, and he’s willing to do anything to win.”
But it was only after the buffer teams in between Notre Dame and Miami in the rankings fell off one by one in the final weeks did the CFP selection committee have to evaluate those two teams side by side in a way that they could no longer overlook the head-to-head result from Week 1. Thus, by a whisker — or a go-ahead 47-yard Carter Davis field goal with 1:04 left in game back on Aug. 31 — did Miami slip past Notre Dame for the final at-large berth and the No. 10 seed on the 12-team bracket (ahead of only Group of Five automatic qualifiers Tulane and James Madison).
If Miami had fallen flat in the playoff, that polarizing selection and snub of the Fighting Irish — which closed the season with 10 straight commanding wins after early losses to ranked Miami and Texas A&M in the first two weeks — would have hung over the entire postseason.
Instead, the Hurricanes escaped a defensive slugfest vs. No. 7 Texas A&M with a 10-3 opening-round win, made a statement with a 24-14 takedown of reigning national champion and No. 2 seed Ohio State, and then outdueled No. 6 Ole Miss, 31-27, with Beck leading the game-winning touchdown drive and fittingly taking it into the end zone himself for the go-ahead 3-yard score with 18 seconds left.
(Notre Dame certainly hasn’t forgotten the snub, but the controversy of it all has shifted to how the framework or the playoff allowed two G5 teams to make it while the Irish sat home.)
Since that overtime loss at SMU on Nov. 1, there may not be any team in the country playing better football than these Hurricanes … well, except maybe one.
“The outside stuff, the outside noise, let’s call it what it is; everyone was throwing dirt on our grave already and buried us, and that’s good,” Cristobal said. “It’s good for the soul. It’s good for you from a mentality standpoint so you understand and recognize more than ever that all that matters are the people inside the building.”
But for everyone who loves college football, its history, the gamut of legacies across every school/program that make it all so unique in the American sports landscape, the “outside stuff” is every bit as compelling as the on-field product. At the very least, they go hand-in-hand, because the true weight of the ultimate outcomes this time of year are as much about the storytelling and subplots as the stats and scores.
And it’s why Miami’s narrative — even if it denies the crowning finish to the most straight-out-of-Disney made-for-the-movies sports story of a generation — is a great one unto itself.
That’s partly because of that adversity it overcame midseason to reset and surge to this moment, sure, but more so because of the adversity its program and fans have endured for most of the last two decades. “The U” produced some of college football’s most legendary and star-studded teams through the 1980s, 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s only to lose its stature in the sport with each subsequent failed coaching hire — four between that last national title team and Cristobal — and an aura that had all but vanished along the way.
“I believe that Miami in the ’80s was so good, I think people fell asleep at the wheel,” said Cristobal, who was on the 1989 and 1991 national title teams. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we don’t need new facilities. We don’t need a budget. We don’t need increased staff. We’re just going to win.’ You blink an eye and 20 years go by and it’s like, where’s Miami?”
Finally back where it belongs.
For one of college football’s fiercest former heavyweights to return to the championship ring after a prolonged absence and potentially deliver a knockout blow to the sport’s Cinderella certainly has its own theatrical hook.
Cignetti’s Turnaround In Bloomington
But we promised we’d come back to the Hoosiers and all the reasons so much of the country will be rooting for Indiana to become college football’s most unlikely champion of the modern era.
In its entire history, Indiana had just three bowl victories before this season — the Holiday Bowl after the 1979 season, the Liberty Bowl in 1988 and the Copper Bowl in 1991. It now has a chance to effectively win three in the span of 19 days as the quarterfinals blowout of Alabama technically served as the Rose Bowl and the semifinals shutdown of Oregon was the Peach Bowl.
Indiana hadn’t won so much as a conference championship since 1967 and had gone 2-10, 4-8 and 3-9 in the three seasons before Cignetti was hired with that noted 3-24 Big Ten mark. More to the point, it had just three winning seasons in the previous 29 years (peaking at 8 wins in that span). The Hoosiers had never won more than 9 games in any season in their history (all respect to their 9-0-1 team in 1945 that finished No. 4 in the AP poll) and hadn’t ended a season ranked in the top 10 since 1967.
Only to immediately rip off an 11-2 campaign, CFP appearance and No. 10 final ranking (getting as high as No. 5 along the way) in Cignetti’s debut. Only to then top that this year with the 15-0 mark and No. 1 ranking Indiana takes into Monday night’s championship game, with a 17-1 Big Ten regular-season record overall in these two seasons.
All with a coach who spent 28 years working his way up as an assistant before finally deciding he needed to leave his position as the wide receivers coach at Alabama at the end of 2010 to bet on himself and take his first head coaching job at Division II IUP, followed by subsequent stops at Elon and James Madison before finally getting his shot to lead a Power Four program at the age of 62. Who was still so unknown at that time that during his introductory press conference he delivered the now legendary line “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.”
All with a core largely built on 13 players Cignetti brought with him from James Madison to the Big Ten, among other impactful transfers, and an inherited roster of mostly former three-star, two-star or outright unrated recruits with a couple notable exceptions. (Wide receivers Omar Cooper Jr. and E.J. Williams Jr. are the lone former four-star prospects among the Hoosiers’ starters, per the 247Sports composite).
“As [center] Pat Coogan said, we’re a bunch of misfits,” Mendoza said after the win over Oregon. “There’s zero five-stars on our team. We’re just a bunch of gritty guys who are glued together and going toward a common goal.”
Cignetti might be the only one growing wary of the expanding lore of his own success — at least with the final chapter still unsettled.
“I think leading up to this game, there’s been a lot of pro-Indiana hype, a lot of rat poison out there,” he said, channeling his former boss Nick Saban. “… I’ve witnessed quite a bit of sentimentalism throughout the week from some of our seniors who we’ve been with quite a long time. I think it’s time to sharpen the saw now, throw those warm fuzzies out the door, that sentimentalism. It’s time to go play a game against a great opponent.
“We’ve got to have a sharp edge going into this game. You don’t go to war with warm milk and cookies.”
For anyone who truly loves college football, though, the Hoosiers’ rise doesn’t lose its awe no matter how many times it is told and touted.
Especially with the Mendoza piece taking it all to the next level this week in Miami.
It was already an incredible arc as is …
Mendoza’s Championship Game Return To Miami
The offseason transfer addition from Cal, after two modestly successful seasons starting for middling Bears teams, becomes the Heisman Trophy winner. And when some pundits question whether he deserved the award because his raw stats — he’s up to 3,349 passing yards, 41 TDs and 6 INTs plus 6 rushing TDs — don’t compare to those of other recent QB Heisman winners, Mendoza delivers an emphatic and inarguable response with two of the best playoff performances on record.
In two wins by a combined 79 points over top-10 teams, he completed 31 of 36 passes (an absurd 86.1%) while throwing 8 touchdowns and 0 interceptions — that’s right, 8 TDs and 5 incompletions with 0 turnovers on the biggest stage — to help put both playoff games out of reach by the third quarter, thus finishing with ho-hum passing totals of 192 and 177 yards because there was simply no need to keep attacking through the air.
Which was the case so many times this season for an Indiana team that won half of its regular-season games by 45 points or more and six of its nine Big Ten games by at least 24 points.
And now, that overlooked recruit who grew up a Hurricanes fan wearing UM-themed face paint to games in this very stadium, who went to the same high school as Cristobal (who was teammates with Mendoza’s father at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami), who wasn’t recruited by the Hurricanes (Cristobal took over just before signing day that year after Mendoza had committed to Cal), is playing back home against that school for the national title and college football legend status.
“I used to be able to walk to University of Miami, used to play rec basketball games there or beach volleyball in the sand courts, and to live under a mile away it means a lot to myself,” he said.
Mendoza was prodded endlessly about that angle and connection since arriving back home in Miami this week, and in his ever-humble way has done his best to downplay any of this story being about him.
But even he couldn’t deny that he is uniquely positioned to understand what’s at stake for both sides Monday night.
“I have pictures on my phone, and I had green and orange paint on my face with a UM hat at Hard Rock Stadium. … So I know how much it means to the community and how much the University of Miami community has been waiting for this moment and a resurgence,” Mendoza said. “They’ve always been a fantastic football program, but resurgence to the national championship level, I know how much it means. However, as a kid being a University of Miami fan, I’m also right now, like my loyalty lies to the Hoosiers. So I know how much it means to both sides.”
Again, one thing is assured entering this historically compelling national championship clash Monday night — either way to plays out, college football wins.
