Indiana's First National Title

Curt Cignetti walked into the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta during Peach Bowl week and found his father's display for the first time. Frank Cignetti Sr. was inducted in 2013. Curt didn't go. He was coaching at IUP and wouldn't skip practice. Frank died in September 2022 at 84, from lymphoid granulomatosis, with a 199-77-1 record and a plaque in a building his son had never entered. Twelve years later, Curt finally stood in front of it — days before his Indiana team beat Oregon 56-22 to reach the national championship game.

Indiana beat Miami 27-21 at Hard Rock Stadium on January 19, 2026. The Hoosiers finished 16-0, the first FBS team to run a perfect season since Yale in 1894. This is a program that held the record for the most losses in college football history. Cignetti went 27-2 in two seasons. He built the roster around 13 transfers from James Madison, where he'd gone 52-9, and he told anyone who'd listen that Indiana's decades of losing came down to one thing. "To look back at what happened to Indiana previous to us coming — 10, 20, 50 years ago — was strictly a lack of commitment from the top. Nothing else," he told ESPN. "And we have the commitment now."

Curt Cignetti at media day before the national championship. Days earlier, he'd visited the College Football Hall of Fame for the first time and stood before his late father Frank's plaque — twelve years after the induction he skipped to coach practice.© Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fernando Mendoza scored the go-ahead touchdown himself, airborne into the end zone with a split lip and a bloodied arm. He's Cuban-American, from Miami, and he had one FBS scholarship offer coming out of high school — from Cal. He'd originally committed to Yale. By December 2025, he was Indiana's first Heisman Trophy winner, finishing first in all six voting regions after throwing a nation-leading 33 touchdowns in the regular season. "I had to go airborne," he told Fox News. "I'd die for my team. Whatever they need me to do. They need me to take shots in the front or the back, whatever it is, I'm gonna die for my team out there."

The person who taught Fernando Mendoza to throw a football is his mother, Elsa. She played tennis at the University of Miami. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis nearly twenty years ago, and her condition worsened after she contracted Covid five years back. She watches games from a wheelchair now. Fernando and his brother Alberto — who served as Fernando's backup at Indiana — have raised over $150,000 for the National MS Society. Fernando is projected as the No. 1 overall pick in the April 2026 NFL Draft, but he's skipping the ceremony. He'll be home in Miami with his family.

Fernando Mendoza's Heisman Trophy on display at media day. Mendoza finished first in all six voting regions after throwing a nation-leading 33 touchdowns in the regular season — Indiana's first Heisman winner.© Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Jamari Sharpe sealed it. With 44 seconds left, Carson Beck — Miami's quarterback, a transfer from Georgia where he'd been part of two national championships as a backup — threw toward Keelan Marion. Sharpe picked it off. At Hard Rock Stadium. His home stadium. Sharpe grew up in Miami, played at Northwestern Senior High, and wanted to be a Hurricane. Miami never recruited him. His uncle Glenn Sharpe played there. Jamari went to Indiana instead, and he ended Miami's season on their own field.

D'Angelo Ponds was standing on that same field. He's one of the 13 JMU transfers, a first-team All-American cornerback who opened the Peach Bowl semifinal with a pick-six against Oregon. He and Sharpe are childhood friends from Miami — Little League teammates. They ended up at Indiana together, 800 miles from home, and they won a national championship together on the field where they both grew up watching football.

On the other sideline, Mario Cristobal had taken Miami to a school-record 13 wins and the program's first College Football Playoff appearance. He played at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami in the 1980s — with Fernando Mendoza's father. He won two national championships as a player at Miami, in 1989 and 1991. The connections in this game ran so deep they could fill a novel. Cristobal called it unfinished business heading into 2026.

Cignetti called it something else. "People can cling to an old way of thinking, categorizing teams as this or that or conferences as this or that," he told ESPN, "or they can adjust to the new world, the shift in the power dynamic in college football today." During the 2025 season, Northwestern quietly passed Indiana on the all-time losses list. The Hoosiers aren't the losingest program anymore. They're the first team in 132 years to finish a season without a loss. Frank Cignetti Sr. compiled 199 wins and made the Hall of Fame. His son went to a program nobody believed in and won everything there was to win. The paradigm shifted.