It still takes a beat to register in the far reaches of your mind.
Truthfully, there may always be some lingering disconnect when the words “Indiana football” are paired with the notion of success. That’s what happens when decades of history reinforce a general perception of the Hoosiers as being lovable losers on the gridiron, the team you would always peg as a win when seeing them on a schedule during the preseason and which seemed to be the perennial homecoming opponent in the Big Ten.
Yet as the 2026 campaign begins in earnest is that Indiana, yes that Indiana, is the reigning national champion. Replaying the highlights from January helps with the cognitive dissonance, but it still bears repeating to reinforce the Cinderella nature of a team which began the 2025 season with more losses than any major program going a perfect 16–0 to be crowned undisputed kings of college football.
Every offseason, college football enters a mode of self-reflection and self-scouting. General managers examine their rosters and sort out where they can fill holes or upgrade. Coaches may look to identity trends with where the game is going and how they can adapt. Athletic directors are in a constant search to drive revenue and devote even greater sums of it to players.
This offseason the biggest questions were: How the heck did the Hoosiers do that, and what will be the ultimate impact from such a run on college football? It’s much easier to understand how bluebloods like Ohio State, Michigan or Alabama win a national title. It’s another thing to fathom how the greatest loser in the sport became its ultimate winner.
“It’s probably not as complicated as maybe people might make it. It really comes down to unbelievable alignment with myself, our president and Coach [Curt] Cignetti,” Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson said. “People have talked about or come to me to ask how all this came together, there’s no question that Coach Cignetti and the players get the majority of the credit. But I’m just saying without us, without president [Pamela] Whitten and her support, we never would have had this opportunity.
“That word alignment sometimes gets overused—what does it mean? Does that mean other schools are not aligned? I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is the three of us are really wired to think the same. We’re wired the same, we have the same work [ethic], there’s a lot of things that move the same. That’s been key.”
Replicating that cohesiveness is something many schools chase but few fail to realize.
It helped that Whitten, who grew up in Tennessee and had stops at Michigan State and Georgia earlier in her career, understood the value of football to a university—even one closely associated with basketball like Indiana. She inherited Dolson as athletic director upon taking over in Bloomington, Ind., and the pair oversaw notable growth in the football budget, taking it from $23.9 million in 2021 to $50.7 million four years later. The school also rather uncharacteristically paid a massive $15.5 million buyout to dismiss former coach Tom Allen before eventually hiring the final piece of the puzzle in a proven head coach to lead the program in Cignetti.
The Hoosiers kept things humming along in lockstep ever since, with investment in the program continuing to increase from new contracts to keep Cignetti when others expressed interest, all the way down to an ever-growing budget spent on the roster which stays within touching distance of fellow College Football Playoff contenders.
“I don’t think you can paint a broad brush and say everybody is rushing to hire an older [lower-level] coach,” one executive at a search firm says. “But schools, ADs, search committees are probably a little more open-minded about candidates after seeing [Cignetti’s] success.”
It’s hard not to see some of that Indiana inspiration in the subsequent coaching carousels with candidates who channel Cignetti traits.
Jason Eck parlayed three successful seasons at Idaho into the New Mexico job and will be a serious candidate for Power 2 gig if he can replicate last season’s historic nine wins. Scott Abell won at the Division III level and with a non-scholarship FCS program before landing at Rice. Jimmy Rogers won a national title at South Dakota State, coached Washington State to a bowl bid under difficult conditions and now is in charge at Iowa State. Eric Morris cut his teeth as a head coach at Incarnate Word while developing a future No. 1 pick (Cam Ward), quickly won 11 games at North Texas and was then hired at Oklahoma State.
Perhaps the most interesting example is Cignetti’s successor at James Madison.
Though Bob Chesney didn’t have to do much in taking over a turnkey program like the Dukes, he was largely a turnaround specialist at lower levels prior to taking JMU to the CFP last season. His first job was at Division III Salve Regina, which had losing records in eight straight seasons before the young coach went 23–9 with the Seahawks. It was much the same at D-II Assumption, going from 3–7 the year prior to his arrival finishing with a 44–16 mark across five years. He resurrected Holy Cross for good measure, too, as the program made the FCS quarterfinals for the first time since 1983.
Chesney’s overriding philosophy is simple: focus on the details, an outlook that would certainly earn an approving nod from his new Big Ten coaching peer in Cignetti.
“The thing I always feel like is you have to identify your standards, but then you gotta stop doing the things that the losers do. I think if you could just stop doing that, you know you don’t even have to do anything else,” Chesney says. “Just stop doing those things—stop leaving the locker room a mess, stop leaving the weight rooms a mess, stop talking down to people, stop missing class, stop being late. You stop all these things, all of a sudden you find yourself in a pretty good spot. Then you can add your own standards and truly advance and accelerate the program.”
Concentrating on the fundamentals always helps, but it’s much easier to do when you have some guys who understand what you want them to do right away and can help set the tone with the culture in the locker room. Though Cignetti was far from the first to bring players with him to his new school in the age of the transfer portal, it’s hard to deny the impact of the 13 which came west two years ago and formed the core of a national title run. Linebacker Aiden Fisher and corner D’Angelo Ponds needed little adjustment going from the Sun Belt to the Big Ten and were central to having such a good defense for the Hoosiers. Receiver Elijah Sarratt and running back Kaelon Black became top threats on offense.
Athletic directors have quickly caught on in the wake of that success, understanding they’re not hiring only a head coach but a roster architect who will have part of the team joining him. Morris has several key players from North Texas among the 92 new faces at Oklahoma State this season, including QB Drew Mestemaker and tailback Caleb Hawkins. Auburn coach Alex Golesh had a similar approach in moving from South Florida. Optimism around Penn State is not just around the Nittany Lions’ schedule, but that Matt Campbell took plenty of veterans who won a bunch of games at Iowa State alongside him.
“Curt did such a great job taking over. He brought players with him from James Madison, he was able to move on from a bunch of [mediocre] players at Indiana, then he had enough money to land guys out of the portal to flip the roster,” an ACC coach says. “That’s an ideal model. It’s not for everyone because some schools won’t be able to flip the roster like that or have enough players [from a previous school] capable of playing at a high level, but you can see a lot of people following the same script.”
“What happened in Indiana, I don’t think anybody saw that coming. But I think that’s the way college football is now, those stories can happen,” says TCU’s Sonny Dykes, who took a 5–7 program to the national title game in his first year in Fort Worth. “We felt like going into the year, we had a decent team. We won a couple of games we probably shouldn’t have won early, then played Oklahoma and blew out a pretty good team. All of a sudden, guys thought, ‘O.K., we’re really good.’ I don’t think any of it’s really new, but we saw the team come together and grow. I think you could say the same thing about Indiana.”
As much as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Hoosiers have become a blueprint for teams changing coaches and those trying to elevate their roster overall.
Though teams are spending more on players than ever, that Indiana won a title has made it much easier to convince donors to open up their wallets in an era where every dollar is crucial and they can produce tangible results on the field. While in the past conversations about raising a half-million dollars to land an offensive linemen may have been met with skeptical reactions from boosters in certain places, having the Hoosiers to point to makes it a much easier case.
“I see that around the landscape of college football,” Boston College coach Bill O’Brien says. “If you look at the Indianas, the Vanderbilts, the Virginias, previous years weren’t very good but now look where they are.”
Regular contenders are not ignoring what they saw last season either as Indiana ran through Alabama, Oregon and Miami on its way to the trophy. The Hoosiers had plenty of upperclassmen on their two-deep last season and have continued fellow Big Ten national champions Ohio State and Michigan’s trend by having far more veterans taking snaps.
“We made a conscious effort this year to get older from where we were a year ago. I still think we are the fourth- or fifth-youngest team. Georgia, I think, is the youngest team in the country and I know Kirby [Smart] has made a conscious effort to get a little bit older,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “That’s seeing the effect that Indiana’s team had a year ago.”
Less clear is what effect it may have on the job security of coaches and athletic directors in a world where every FBS fan base just saw one of the least expected programs of all-time bag a historic title.
Does Will Stein have time to perform similar miracles down the road at Kentucky, or will patience in Lexington get tested early in his tenure after the school spent big on Mark Stoops’s buyout, hired a new athletic director and now is spending more on its roster? Wisconsin kept Luke Fickell last season, but it certainly doesn’t sit well that it was the Hoosiers who broke through before their own much more historically successful program did. Lincoln Riley is certainly feeling the heat at USC as fans may hear his remarks about how the Trojans are finally aligned in Los Angeles but can’t seem to square them with diminishing results for the amount of money committed to the program already.
Even James Franklin, for as much fan fare as his hire at Virginia Tech has brought, likely doesn’t get the same kind of leeway in either years or postseason wins that he once did at Penn State.
“They’ve made it much harder for all of us,” joked one Big Ten athletic director, the chuckle underscoring a kernel of truth. “Now nobody can say you can’t.”
That notably includes Indiana, which isn’t resting on its laurels even if the attention on Cignetti & Co. has increased significantly this offseason.
There’s still tape to watch, funds to raise and a fan base to fire up about 2026 and beyond starting with the Week 1 opener against North Texas. As much as the impact of the team’s remarkable run will continue to reverberate across college football for several more years, the start of a new season is yet another reminder that the last one is now just relegated to the memories.
“None of us sit around and think we just figured this thing all out. As far as people in the room, we think we’ve got to double down and work harder,” Dolson said. “You know it’s fleeting. Now we’ve got to kind of prove ourselves again.”
If they’re able to evolve like that, then seeing ‘national champion Indiana’ in bright lights and across a banner at midfield won’t be a phrase that draws a double take ever again.
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BRYAN FISCHER
Bryan Fischer is a staff writer at Sports Illustrated covering college sports. He joined the SI staff in October 2024 after spending nearly two decades at outlets such as FOX Sports, NBC Sports and CBS Sports. A member of the Football Writers Association of America’s All-America Selection Committee and a Heisman Trophy voter, Fischer has received awards for investigative journalism from the Associated Press Sports Editors and FWAA. He has a bachelor’s in communication from USC.
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