It happened. It’s real.
Indiana University Hoosiers football. Big Ten Conference champions.
Truly, there’s so many things that can be said about this. Too many. Way too many for a single blog, be it this story
or website as a whole. I’m gonna do my best though, so bear with me here.
Indiana winning the 2025 Big Ten football championship is the most significant achievement for the athletic department since… what? The men’s basketball national championship in 1987? Several men’s soccer titles? Women’s basketball’s rise? Several swimming and diving accolades that are far too numerous to mention here?
It’s up there. It’s no secret that football is king these days, at the collegiate and professional levels, so it’s hard to fully grasp what this means in the moment. Going “time will tell” is passing the buck on capturing this moment, for sure, but it’s true.
Indiana went from losing more football games than anyone else ever to beating No. 1 Ohio State, the sport’s standard bearer, on a neutral field where the crowd was overwhelmingly in its favor. The Hoosiers will be No. 1 in the next poll and earn the top overall seed in the College Football Playoff with an extremely real shot at a national championship.
And it did all that in Curt Cignetti’s second season. TWO YEARS!
Beyond what it means for Indiana, it’s up there for the greatest turnarounds in the history of sport. Not college football. Not even football as a whole. Sport.
That’s nothing to say of what this achievement means on a personal level. Sport, at its core, is about bringing people together be they family, friends, or total strangers wearing the same colors on a given Saturday.
Generations of cream and crimson clad Hoosier fans have shown up at Memorial Stadium, flipped on the television or tuned the dial to Don Fisher and waited with bated breath to see if Indiana would finally Do It. What’s It? Well, several things.
It could be just winning the game, actually. Indiana hasn’t exactly been proficient at doing so throughout its history. It could be managing to get six such wins and qualify for postseason play. It could be actually managing to win the bowl game once it gets there.
But IT, for the longest time, has been bringing one of the sport’s titans to its knees.
Indiana went decades without a win over Michigan, snapping that streak in 2020 and doing to again in 2024, for good measure. But IT was always, always Them.
“The” Ohio State Buckeyes.
The Scarlet and Gray owned a staggering 30-0 advantage in the past three decades and kept last year’s breakout feel-good 11-1 Hoosiers from staying perfect. Blowout after blowout, close game after close game, the Buckeyes always found a way to pull it out.
Even Purdue, Indiana’s in-state rival of similar stature, though they’d never admit it, managed a few wins over Ohio State during those 30 years. That made it sting all the more.
Program legends and stalwarts have taken on Ohio State and lost. Lee Corso, a national icon, rather famously stopped a matchup against the Buckeyes to take a photo in front of the scoreboard that showed an Indiana lead over Ohio State in a game that didn’t, uh, end well.
That’s why 13-10 matters. For everyone who’s here now, but for them as well.
For Kurtis Rourke. Justice Ellison. CJ West. Tayven Jackson. Michael Penix Jr. Ty Fryfogle. Whop Philyor. Stevie Scott. Cam Jones. Jerome Johnson. Micah McFadden. Peyton Ramsey. Nick Westbrook-Ikhine. Marcelino McRary-Ball. Zander Diamont. Nate Sudfeld. Tevin Coleman. Jordan Howard. Dan Feeney. Rodger Saffold.
(I only have so much space and brain power, feel free to comment names below)
For Antwaan. For Anthony. For Hep. For George.
For the countless Hoosier faithful who tuned in every Saturday, waiting for this.
On a cold Saturday night in Indianapolis, these Hoosiers became immortal.
Fernando Mendoza. Aiden Fisher. Elijah Sarratt. Omar Cooper Jr. Charlie Becker. Rolijah Hardy. D’Angelo Ponds. Roman Hemby. Kaelon Black. Mikail Kamara. Stephen Daley. Isaiah Jones. Kahlil Benson. Carter Smith. Pat Coogan. Drew Evans. Bray Lynch. So very many others.
Bryant Haines. Mike Shanahan.
Curt Cignetti.
Immortals in Indianapolis.
