The Indiana Hoosiers have never played in a college football national championship game. They will check that box for the first time on Monday, and they are just one win away from accomplishing the most remarkable turnaround in college football history.
Up until this season, Indiana was on record as the losingest team in the history of college football. Coming into the 2025 season, the Hoosiers had lost a record 715 games in 138 seasons of varsity football (passed this year by Northwestern with 719).
Since Curt Cignetti arrived in 2024 to take over the Indiana coaching reins, however, the Hoosiers have come out of nowhere and become world beaters. Before Cignetti arrived on the scene, Indiana had gone 9-27 overall and a Big Ten-worst 3-24 in league play in the previous three seasons.
All the once-downtrodden Hoosiers have done in the past 24 months is produce an amazing 24-2 record, including 15-0 this season, and put themselves at the doorstep of delivering the school's first national championship in football in Cignetti's second season at the helm. Indiana was also in the College Football Playoff a year ago, but lost to Notre Dame in the opening round.
Why Indiana's amazing 2025 season relates to OU's 2000 national championship team
If this college football coaching success story sounds a little familiar, it should. The 2000 Oklahoma football team also rose up virtually out of nowhere to finish off a perfect 13-0 season with a national championship in -- wait for it -- Bob Stoops' second season at Oklahoma.
And here's the part that is even more similar about 2000 Oklahoma and 2025 Indiana. Neither team is loaded with superstars like you would expect of a national championship-caliber team. That's not to say both teams didn't have talented players on the roster, but just not necessarily of the elite four- or five-star variety.
Another thing the two teams -- separated by a quarter century -- have in common is outstanding quarterback play. Indiana's Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner, has been a freak this season. The quarterback on the 2000 Oklahoma team was Josh Heupel, who was runner-up that season for the Heisman Trophy. Heupel is now the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers.
Bob Stoops' first season in Norman, the Sooners were 7-5, but the three seasons before that represented the worst three-year span in Oklahoma's storied gridiron history. The Sooners were 12-22 in the three seasons prior to Stoops' arrival and going nowhere. Two years later, as is the case this season with Indiana's Cignetti, the Sooners were national champs. How does that happen?
First and foremost, it happens because of the head coach and his coaching staff and the culture that they are able to establish within the program. When you bring in the right players at the right positions, who are of the right character, fit well in the culture and are fully committed to putting in the hard work and getting better, not just for themselves, but for the teammates around them, good things generally come out of it.
Cignetti's Indiana team doesn't feature nearly the amount of elite talent or NFL-caliber players that Ohio State and many of the other top college programs regularly possess. But the 2025 Hoosiers are a prime example of what can happen when a team has total buy-in to its head coach's vision and his belief in and support for his players. And when each individual player knows his job, does it exceedingly well and plays together as a team -- as in a finely tuned symphony coming together to make beautiful music -- a great outcome is generally the result.
Of course, staying healthy and avoiding serious injuries, as well as being on the receiving end of some good old-fashioned luck along the journey, are critical success factors that come into play for every championship season. Also, being able to overcome adversity and finding a way to win close games. These are factors that helped lead to the success enjoyed by Indiana football this season and were also an equally big part of the 2000 Oklahoma football team.
If you're an Oklahoma football fan, it's hard not to be reminded of the 2000 Sooner team when you look at what Curt Cignetti and his Indiana football team have done this season, not just what they've accomplished in such a short period of time, but how and with who they've done it.
The 2000 team was not Stoops' best Oklahoma team, but that was the last Sooner team to win a national championship and Stoops' only team to do so. There have been other Oklahoma teams this century that had more All-Americans and better individual talent, but none that did a better job of overcoming adversity, playing together as one and absolutely refusing to lose.
The only thing missing for Indiana in this comparison of success stories a generation apart is a resulting national championship. The Hoosiers will have the opportunity to fill in that missing blank on Monday night when they meet Miami in the College Football Playoff.