10 numbers define Indiana’s national championship run

Posted January 20, 2026 4:50 pm

By Christopher Kamrani

The Indiana Hoosiers are the champions of college football. Holy bleeping bleep. The Hoosiers capped one of the most dominant seasons in the history of the sport with their 27-21 win over Miami on Monday night in Hard Rock Stadium. Indiana earned perfection, finishing the 2025 season 16-0.

Can you believe it? Well, if you haven’t accepted this fait accompli, then that’s on you. In just two years under the tantalizingly curt Curt Cignetti, Indiana has morphed itself from perennial embarrassment to an emphatic force to be reckoned with.

Here are 10 numbers putting into context the Hoosiers’ title in the wake of decades upon decades of sheer misery in Bloomington.

16-0: Before there was Cignetti, there was William Rhodes, a 20-something football coach of the last team to go 16-0 in a major college football season and be named national champions. Rhodes did it at his alma mater, Yale, where he led the Bulldogs to glory in 1894.

1996: While Millennials and Gen Z-ers continue to flood social media accounts about how much they miss 2016 for some reason, where’s the love for 1996? That was the last time a program won a national championship for the first time when The Head Ball Coach™ led Florida to its first title. Until Monday. Thirty years later, Indiana became the first first-time champion since Steve Spurrier’s Gators were crowned.

715: Hyperbole isn’t even needed when discussing Indiana’s history of being at the bottom of the heap. Until this year, the Hoosiers were the losingest program in college football with 715 program losses. Cignetti’s added just two L’s to that mix in two years. Northwestern surpassed its Big Ten brethren in 2025 in that L department and now has 718 losses and counting. (Hey, Cats, at least Chip Kelly is coming to town!)

20th: Remember when college football was in the throes of an existential crisis (which one? LOL) about what the subjectivity of the preseason Associated Press poll means? That was several years ago. Back in August. Well, the Hoosiers debuted at No. 20 in the preseason poll. The only national champion since 1990 that started lower was Auburn in 2010, when the Tigers came in ranked No. 22.

1991: Before the Hoosiers commenced down their fury road of destruction during this CFP title run, the last time the program won a bowl game prior to dismantling Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl came in a bowl game most young college football fans have never even heard of. Indiana beat Baylor 24-0 in the 1991 Copper Bowl in Tucson, Ariz. The 34-year-old bowl game win drought was the second-longest in the sport.

29.9: This was only the third time since 1945 — 1988 (12.5) and 2024 (25.6) — that IU beat its opponents by an average of at least 10 points per game. The Hoosiers won 12 of 16 games by at least 10 points this season, including three of their four largest wins against ranked teams ever.

41: The legendary Lee Corso tuned in at home near Orlando, Fla., to watch the program he led for 10 seasons reach the mountaintop. Corso, now 90, retired from his post as the face of ESPN’s “College GameDay” after 38 years on the job. Prior to Cignetti’s arrival, Corso was the only Indiana coach in school history to beat a ranked team in a bowl game, winning the 1979 Holiday Bowl against No. 9 BYU. A beloved figure in Bloomington, Corso went 41-68-2 coaching the Hoosiers.

Corso returned to Bloomington with GameDay in 2024 and ESPN’s “Stanford Steve” Coughlin shared a great anecdote about how beloved Corso still is there.

“Last year when we went to Indiana, we were at the little coffee shop in the lobby of our hotel on Friday. I’m in line with Coach waiting for coffee, and he leans over and says, ‘Steve, I’ve never had to wait for coffee in this town this long in my life,’” Coughlin said. “And once people saw him, they start streaming over to him. So I’m playing fullback for him a little bit.”

2,149: Fernando Mendoza just won a national championship and a Heisman Trophy in the last month. But once upon a time, the Indiana superstar quarterback was an undervalued commodity in the highly subjective world of high school recruiting rankings. Mendoza, a lanky quarterback at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami was ranked the 2,149th player in the country in the 247Sports Composite. It’s not an exact science, but man, you’re telling us there were 2,148 players better than this dude?

13: As players are likely to do when their head coach takes a new gig, a total of 13 former James Madison Dukes — an FCS program until 2022 — followed their intrepid head coach to Indiana. The Hoosiers don’t finish the year without a blemish if not for most of them. But in Monday’s title tilt, Indiana defensive end Mikail Kamara had one of the plays of the year in a season filled with so many when he blocked a punt that the Hoosiers recovered for a touchdown. Turns out, talent identification and projection matters.

27-2: Man, Curt Cignetti went 27-2 in his first two years at Indiana. The only other coach in the modern era who came close to starting off that spectacularly was Urban Meyer at Ohio State when the Buckeyes went 24-2 in his first two seasons there. But, like, you know who didn’t go 27-2 in their first two years at schools they developed into title contenders? Nick Saban (19-8 at Alabama). Kirby Smart (21-7 at Georgia). Jimbo Fisher (19-8 at FSU). Dabo Swinney (15-12 at Clemson). 27-2!