34. 37. 58. 80.
That’s the amount of years that have passed since Indiana football’s last postseason win, last win over Ohio State, last Big Ten championship of any kind and last outright Big Ten championship.
Curt Cignetti has already made a ton of history in his two seasons as the Hoosiers’ head coach, setting the high mark in wins with 11 in 2024 en route to the program’s first College Football Playoff appearance before passing it this season.
Tonight he and No. 2 Indiana have a chance to reset the
above numbers all the way back to 0s across the board. Before them lies No. 1 Ohio State, a game of the century and a shot at true national immortality. At their back is the encompassing weight of Hoosier history.
See, ordinarily I’d need to clarify that Indiana isn’t known for success among its own fanbase. But that’s not true. The program is synonymous with struggle and, unfortunately, losing football games pretty much nationwide.
Fans clad in cream and crimson would turn out to Memorial Stadium or flip on the television for years thinking, hey, maybe this is the year. Maybe something different will happen for once. National fans, many of them from the sport’s vibrant online community, would tune in for a peek here and there, almost as though the team was an exhibit.
Ranked teams from titanic programs like Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State would stop by Bloomington on a yearly basis and, every so often, the game was close. Every one starts that way, of course, but sometimes they’d stay like that. The Hoosiers, God love ‘em, would be putting up a fight and land within a score at the half. Sometimes even after the third quarter!
But no. Fate wouldn’t have it. Indiana, much to the chagrin of those cream and crimson faithful, would inevitably lose the game. It was usually something different every time. An errant flag here, a missed blocking assignment there, blown coverage way downfield or a fumble so comical you’d think it was straight out of a cartoon.
No program has invented ways to lose football games quite like this and, for the longest time, nobody was better at it.
Coaches and incredible talents came through, of course, would-be savor and messiah after messiah. They all ran into difficulties, some of their own making and others the design of the athletics administration itself, but none were able to turn this beleaguered program into a winner. For the longest time, given the internal difficulties and prioritization of a basketball program desperately clinging to relevance, it felt like whichever coach finally pulled it off would have to drag a kicking and screaming Indiana to relevance.
But that didn’t happen.
Indiana didn’t change. The sport did. It wasn’t sudden, but it became incredibly apparent throughout athletic departments that football was king a long time ago. What wasn’t apparent was that those who failed to invest could find themselves left behind.
The Pac-12, a major conference for decades, was killed. The survivors scatters while Oregon State and Washington State, two programs above Indiana in the sport’s hierarchy, were left to pick up the pieces of what was left. You couldn’t blame a failure to invest for the fate of the Beavers and Huskies, but you could note that the sport and powers behind it weren’t afraid to throw even the oldest of friends to the wayside in pursuit of security and, well, cash.
The Hoosiers had to invest, fast. You know the story. They found a winner in a tough, charismatic no-nonsense coach from JMU in the sense that he’d literally won everywhere he’d been. His past and Indiana’s stood in direct contrast, with one side sure to overtake the other.
Curt Cignetti won. But now, so too does Indiana.
He went 11-1 in 2024, as previously mentioned. In 2025? 12-0 so far, a historic finish. What sweetened the deal was a combined 122-3 score in two games over a suddenly reeling Purdue program that’d spent plenty of time in the winner’s circle mocking Indiana before a lack of investment caught up with it.
Beating Ohio State and winning the Big Ten Championship would be one of the athletic department’s most significant achievements in decades. It’s worth recognizing several national titles from men’s soccer, swimming & diving and other Olympic sports, but they got there because of investment. Now football has it.
When Curt Cignetti runs onto the field several hours from now, he’ll be wearing the same trident all of his predecessors did en route to those countless defeats, leading a group clad in the same cream and crimson their forebears donned against the same scarlet and gray through the decades.
Cignetti’s past has won out over Indiana’s before. Winning over losing. Who’s to say he can’t do it again?
