Curt Cignetti's team has pulled off the unthinkable, beating Miami in the National Championship to cap off a perfect 16-0 season. The win doesn't just mark a National Championship, but one of the greatest Cinderella runs in the history of sports.
Every era has its Cinderella story, whether it's Herb Brooks' 1980 US Men's Hockey team knocking off the Soviet Union, Jim Valvano's NC State Basketball team winning the National Championship, or Eli Manning's Giants knocking off the undefeated New England Patriots.
None of those teams faced the uphill battle that Indiana and Curt Cignetti faced when he took over as head coach. The Hoosiers are a historic loser in college football, as they led the NCAA in all-time losses coming into this season.
When Curt Cignetti took over at Indiana, he inherited a 3-9 team that went just 1-8 in conference play. Curt Cignetti took over with all the confidence in the world that he would win right away, and he proved it, going 11-2 in his first season with an 8-1 record in Big Ten play. The Hoosiers' two losses came against Notre Dame and Ohio State, who faced off for the National Championship.
Even after the magical run in 2024, no one believed that Curt Cignetti's team was the real deal as this team entered the season ranked just 20th in the AP Poll.
At a program like Indiana, winning 10 games was a massive achievement, as Cignetti owns the only 10+ win seasons in school history. It would've been an impressive job for Curt Cignetti just to go 10-2 and make the playoffs on occasion, yet he's taken this program to another level.
Indiana didn't just win the National Championship; the Hoosiers did so in perfect fashion, going 16-0 and slaying monsters along the way.
Oregon is the anti-Indiana with all the 5-star recruits and flash that the Hoosiers don't have, yet Cignetti's team demolished them twice. Everyone thought that this Cinderella run would come to an end against Ohio State, yet the Hoosiers slayed the beast in the Big Ten Championship Game.
Facing Alabama in the Rose Bowl felt like a moment where the torch was truly passed to the Hoosiers. Going up against the mystic of the Alabama Crimson Tide, the Hoosiers made Alabama look like most of Nick Saban's opponents putting a 38-3 beatdown on Kalen DeBoer's team signaling this team truly arrived.
While other coaches will tell you that it takes years to rebuild a program, Curt Cignetti has taken one of the worst and has accomplished the unthinkable in just two seasons. Cignetti didn't stack 5-star recruits and elite transfer classes; he's done it with players who, much like himself, were overlooked until this team became a monster.
Curt Cignetti asked everyone to Google him, and now when you do, you'll see a long list of accomplishments no one thought were possible at Indiana. Cignetti is now a National Champion, a Big Ten Champion, and he's won 18 different Coach of the Year Awards.
The countless trophies Cignetti has won in a short period of time don't even stack up to the overall accomplishment he's had at Indiana. The Hoosiers have gone from a historic loser to a National Championship winner, and it's all thanks to their head coach.