This Indiana football team and its already-legendary head coach are no longer just a great story.
They are absolutely that — one of the most incredible stories in college football, and really, sports history — but they so much more as well.
These Hoosiers might just be one of the most dominant teams in recent college football history.
Indiana has won two College Football Playoff games over Alabama and Oregon by a combined margin of 69 points after steamrolling Oregon 56-22 in the semifinals Friday night in Atlanta, and will look to finish off its unparalleled underdog uprising while playing for the national championship Jan. 19 vs. Miami.
Except, the 15-0 Hoosiers are certainly no longer underdogs of any kind — they’ve opened as 7.5-point favorites in the national title game even though Miami will be playing in its home stadium.
As for their utter domination of the Ducks, it can be summed up quickly.
Indiana scored on the first play of the game when D’Angelo Ponds picked off Oregon QB Dante Moore and returned it 25 years for a touchdown.
The Ducks answered right back with a 14-play, 75-yard touchdown drive, but there was no keeping pace in this matchup.
The Hoosiers scored the next five touchdowns (in the span of six possessions) to go up 42-7 as the game was over the opening minutes of the third quarter.
Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza picked apart one of the best defenses in college football, completing 17 of 20 passes for 177 yards, 5 touchdowns and 0 interceptions, while the Hoosiers’ defense forced 3 turnovers.
Even ever-steely coach Curt Cignetti had to smile after this one.
There are endless ways to frame how incredible all of this is, but we’ll keep it to our top five takeaways from the Hoosiers’ Peach Bowl masterpiece.
1. Putting It In Perspective
It feels necessary to keep reiterating just how amazingly absurd all of this is.
Not only has Indiana never won a national championship in football but it hadn’t even won a conference title since 1967 before winning the Big Ten this season. It hadn’t won a bowl game since the 1991 Copper Bowl.
The Hoosiers held the dubious distinction of having the most losses in college football history before being passed by Northwestern this fall. The program had gone 2-10, 4-8 and 3-9 with just three Big Ten wins over that three-year span before hiring Cignetti.
He took over that and in two seasons has led Indiana to a 26-2 overall record, 17-1 Big Ten mark, a conference championship, two CFP appearances and now the national championship game.
Totally improbable.
That would be true however the Hoosiers got to 15-0 and the national title game, but doing it this dominantly is whole other piece of all this and what the ultimate legacy of this team will be.
Indiana has four wins over playoff teams this year — No. 2 Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game, No. 5 Oregon in the regular season and CFP semifinals and No. 9 Alabama — and only one of those was by single-digits (13-10 over the Buckeyes). The Hoosiers also won half of their regular-season games by 45 points or more, including four Big Ten beatdowns over a then-No. 9 Illinois (63-10), UCLA (56-6), Maryland (55-10) and Purdue (56-3).
Though, Cignetti did try to warn us all …
2. From 0-Stars To All-Stars
The other reason this is already the greatest story in college football history is that Cignetti and Indiana are doing this with a collection of players who were mostly three-star, two-star and 0-star recruits.
This just doesn’t happen — not just beating Alabama and Oregon and their stable of five-star and four-star talent but outright bullying them.
Consider this …
Texas Tech was 12-1 with 12 wins by three touchdowns or more after spending a bounty in the transfer portal to build an expensive roster. The Red Raiders were by any measure a great college football team. They were not anywhere near the caliber of Oregon, though, getting dominated 23-0 by the Ducks in the CFP quarterfinals.
The same Ducks who were down 42-7 to Indiana after two and a half quarters.
And the Hoosiers are doing all of that mostly with players that Oregon or Alabama wouldn’t have recruited or taken.
Let’s just look at the players who made the biggest impact Friday night and how they were viewed as recruits, using the 247Sports Composite ratings.
Mendoza, the Heisman-winning QB, was a two-star recruit who was overlooked despite playing in the recruiting hotbed of Miami. He transferred in after three years at Cal.
WR Elijah Sarratt, who had 7 catches for 75 yards and 2 TDs vs. Oregon and has 62 catches for 802 yards and 15 TDs this season, had no star rating when he committed to Indiana in the 2022 class.
WR Charlie Becker, who had 2 catches for 48 yards and a TD and has scored in both CFP games, was a three-star prospect ranked the No. 130 WR and No. 977 overall recruit in the 2024 class.
WR Omar Cooper Jr, who had another TD reception Friday and has a team-high 64 catches for 866 yards and 13 TDs, is one of the few four-stars on the roster but was ranked the No. 43 WR in the 2022 recruiting class when he signed with the Hoosiers. Fellow WR E.J. Williams, who had a TD grab vs. the Ducks, was also a four-star signee with Clemson in the 2020 class.
RB Kaelon Black, who had a team-high 63 rushing yards and 2 TDs, was a two-star recruit who followed Cignetti from James Madison.
RB Roman Hemby, who rushed for 53 yards in the win, was a three-star who recruit who transferred in from Maryland.
LB Aiden Fisher, who had a team-high 9 tackles and 1.5 tackles for loss, had no recruiting rating and followed Cignetti from James Madison.
DB D’Angelo Ponds, who had the pick-6, was a three-star recruit who also came over from James Madison.
Edge rusher Daniel Ndukwe, who had 2 sacks vs. the Ducks, was a low three-star prospect ranked the 1,794th-best player in the 2024 recruiting class.
DT Dominique Ratcliff, who also notched a sack, was a low three-star ranked No. 2,273 in the 2020 class who started out at Louisiana.
LB Isaiah Jones, who tallied 6 tackles and 1.5 TFLs, was a low three-star ranked the No. 994 prospect in the 2022 class.
LB Rolijah Hardy, who had 6 tackles, 1.5 TFLs and leads the team with 99 tackles and 8 sacks, had no recruiting rating while signing with Indiana in the 2024 class.
Star S Louis Moore, who has 83 tackles and 6 INTs this season, was an unrated prospect out of junior college.
And on and on.
This won’t be the case in the future as Indiana has shown it now has money to sign high-profile transfers and will certainly be a desired destination for high school recruits moving forward, but it’s absolutely one of the most amazing parts of this whole Hoosiers run that they’re doing it this way.
3. Appreciating Fernando Mendoza
Mendoza did win the Heisman Trophy so it’s not as if he’s lacking for positive attention and appreciation, but there have been plenty quick to point out that his stats pale in comparison to any other recent Heisman-winning QB and the process of picking him apart ahead of the NFL draft has already started.
Let’s just point out that these two playoff wins illustrate part of the reason why Mendoza’s raw stats aren’t even greater — so often this season he simply hasn’t needed to do more or play the full fourth quarter.
In these wins over Alabama and Oregon, he averaged 184.5 passing yards because he only attempted 36 passes combined over those two games while completing 31 with 8 TDs.
Mendoza’s efficiency and execution are his superpowers, but he’s also made plenty of NFL-level throws this season.
What’s more impressive — throwing for 300 yards a game or having 8 TD passes and only 5 incompletions across two playoff games? Exactly.
In fact, Mendoza had five games this season with as many or more TDs than incompletions. Big Ten Network’s Dave Revsine noted that no other QB this century has done that more than twice.
And then there’s this — we have no way to independently confirm it, but Yahoo Sports noted that Mendoza is the only FBS or NFL QB to ever have a game with 5 passing TDs, an 85% completion rate and 25 rushing yards.
And this …
4. College Football’s Most Underrated WR Corps
Mendoza has gotten plenty of spotlight this season, and Indiana’s defense eventually started getting its due starting with the Big Ten championship.
But what probably hasn’t been talked about enough is just how elite this Hoosiers’ receiving corps has been all season. Not just in terms of raw stats but how consistently they come down with high-degree-of-difficulty grabs in big moments.
It’s no surprise that each of Indiana’s top three receivers have had touchdowns in both playoff games.
Let’s take a closer look at each and their best moments from the semifinals.
Elijah Sarratt: 62 catches, 802 yards and 15 TDs
Omar Cooper Jr: 64 receptions for 866 yards and 13 TDs (including the incredible game-winner in the comeback win over Penn State)
Charlie Becker: 30 catches for 614 yards and 4 TDs, averaging 20.5 yards per catch (and a season-high 126 yards in the Big Ten championship game)
And let’s also throw in E.J. Williams Jr. (36-438-6) …
5. Parting Thoughts On Oregon
Oregon is still chasing its first national championship, and its fans have to feel gut-punched after Friday night as another truly great Ducks team came up short.
The pressure may start to mount on coach Dan Lanning to prove he can win big in the playoffs now four years into his tenure, but let’s also put into perspective what he’s done with the Ducks.
He’s 48-8 overall, 32-4 in conference play (including 17-1 in two Big Ten seasons), now has three straight seasons with 12 or more wins and these are his losses.
There are few fan bases in the country that wouldn’t want their program to trade places with where Oregon sits right now in the hierarchy of the college football.
We’ll see what Miami does vs. Indiana, but it may prove out that no team was getting in the way of the Hoosiers’ championship quest this year.
