The Untold Story Behind Indiana’s Legendary Triumph: How Fernando Mendoza and Curt Cignetti Stunned the Sports World

There’s a certain kind of magic that happens in sports — those fleeting moments when history bends, and the impossible suddenly feels downright inevitable. Picture this: the clock ticking down with just 9 minutes, 27 seconds left in a game that’s been nothing short of a rollercoaster. Indiana, a program long considered the underdog with a legacy heavier on losses than wins, was now standing toe-to-toe with Miami, clawing to hold onto a lead that felt as fragile as a soap bubble. The crowd was buzzing, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife, and in the heat of that crucible, a decision was made — not the safe play, not the conventional one, but a gutsy call that would etch itself into the annals of sports lore. Curt Cignetti, with stakes higher than ever, pulled his field goal team off the field and yelled, “Get off the field! We’re going for it!” That four-yard gamble? It wasn’t just about the yards or the points; it was the beating heart of a 139-year odyssey, a story of grit, belief, and defying every odd stacked against them. What happened next redefined what it means to believe in your brothers, to bet on yourself when the world expects you to fold. This isn’t just a game recap — it’s a tale of transformation, a seismic shift in college football’s landscape, proving that with the right mix of courage and conviction, legends write themselves. LEARN MORE

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — About half an hour before Curt Cignetti stood on a stage and lifted a trophy, before Mark Cuban put on the T-shirt they hand out to the national champions, before tens of thousands of fans sang ABBA’s “Fernando” in unison as red-and-white confetti fell on the field at Hard Rock Stadium, there was a moment that defined all of it.

With 9 minutes, 27 seconds remaining on the clock, the greatest turnaround story in the history of American sports was wobbling toward the finish line. Indiana hadn’t put Miami away, and the Hurricanes were starting to claw back their momentum.

In that moment, it felt very much like four yards could be the difference between a championship that will be remembered forever and a lifetime of second guessing.

Initially, Cignetti sent his field goal unit onto the field. Taking a six-point lead would have been the safe, by-the-book play. But it wouldn’t have been the right one. Carter Smith, Indiana’s left tackle, watched Cignetti tell his kicking team he changed his mind.

“Get off the field! We’re going for it!”

It took Indiana football 139 years to get here, and if there was a gravity to the biggest coaching decision of Cignetti’s coaching career and the biggest play of quarterback Fernando Mendoza’s life, it had already been defied by the time they exited their timeout huddle with 9 minutes, 27 seconds remaining in the College Football Playoff championship game.

It was only one fourth down in a game with a lot of big plays left. But if you’re trying to describe how the program with the most losses in the history of college football ended up two years later as the first 16-0 national champion in the sport’s modern era, it resides somewhere in between Cignetti’s decision to pull his field-goal team off the field and Mendoza bullying through the line of scrimmage, cutting back to his right when he saw a defender closing in and stretching to the end zone for the touchdown and a 10-point lead.

“A big constant we’ve had is to bet on ourselves,” Mendoza said. “Whenever they called that play, we knew we’re going to bet on ourselves one more time in the biggest stage of the game. It wasn’t the perfect coverage for it, but I trusted my linemen and everybody had a gritty performance today. It was the least I could do for my brothers.”

MIAMI GARDENS, FL - JANUARY 19: Head Coach Curt Cignetti of the Indiana Hoosiers lifts the National Champsionship trophy following the Indiana Hoosiers versus the Miami Hurricanes College Football Playoff National Championship Game Presented by AT&T on January 19, 2026, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL. (Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) — MIAMI GARDENS, FL – JANUARY 19: Head Coach Curt Cignetti of the Indiana Hoosiers lifts the National Champsionship trophy following the Indiana Hoosiers versus the Miami Hurricanes College Football Playoff National Championship Game Presented by AT&T on January 19, 2026, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL. (Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

As Indiana built to this, from the upset win at Oregon in October, to the last-second escape at Penn State in November, to beating Ohio State for the Big Ten title, to romping through the playoff with wins over programs that wrote the history of the sport, everybody wanted to figure out how.

Sometimes, the only explanation is watching it happen.

All the things that weren’t supposed to happen in college football? Indiana made them happen. The Hoosiers cracked the playoff. They made blue-bloods feel blue. They won the national championship.

And at the end, as Jamari Sharpe snagged the interception that secured Indiana’s 27-21 victory, there was little doubt about what it meant: In a sport where upward mobility has forever been slow and grueling, leading often to a dead end, what Indiana pulled off in two years is the most unlikely run in the history of American sports.

“Ever. Ever,” said Cuban, who won an NBA title as the Dallas Mavericks’ owner and is now helping fund his alma mater’s roster. “I mean, the Miracle on Ice, I don’t think there’s anything compared to this. To go from the outhouse to the penthouse, to win 16 games in a row, I mean, who’d have thunk? I don’t think anybody could ever imagine in their wildest of wildest dreams.”

Cignetti had this dream early in life. The son of College Football Hall of Fame coach Frank Cignetti, who got fired after four years at West Virginia but became a legend in D-II, spent his childhood envisioning himself as “a Bear Bryant kind of coach.” But the business never handed him those cards to play.

As he worked his way up the ladder, he too often landed on coaching staffs that lost — Rice, Temple, Pittsburgh — until Nick Saban hired him as the recruiting coordinator and receivers coach at the beginning of his Alabama dynasty.

“That tied it together for me,” Cignetti said. “I was hitting the big 5-0 and wasn’t a coordinator, wasn’t on track to get a head-coaching job and didn’t want to be a 60-year-old assistant. I saw what those lives looked like as a kid. I took an unprecedented chance in this business.”

He became the head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the same place his father coached. As far as he was concerned, the Bear Bryant dream was long gone. It turned out the journey was only beginning.

From IUP to Elon to James Madison and then Indiana — the worst of the worst. Nobody won there, and even those who had a little success eventually got fired too because nothing was built to last there. It was a graveyard. At least maybe Cignetti could make some money.

A photograph of Indiana’s nearly-empty Memorial Stadium, taken during the first game of the Cignetti era in August 2024, began to go viral Monday on social media. It was a snapshot of what Hoosier football used to be: a program that had been dead for decades, a lost cause, a waste of time.

You couldn’t even really call Indiana’s fans long-suffering. In basketball, the sport Indiana fans used to care about above all else, they’ve suffered. But is there really any suffering if there’s no hope in the first place?

“There wasn’t an emphasis on football, plain and simple,” Cignetti said. “Basketball school.”

And then, he just … changed it. Some of the best parts of his James Madison teams came with him. He demanded investment and attitude. He out-evaluated everyone in the transfer portal, and as Indiana’s 2024 season unfolded, leading to a first-round playoff loss at Notre Dame, it was clear he was outcoaching a lot of the game’s stalwarts, too.

MIAMI GARDENS, FL - JANUARY 19: QB Fernando Mendoza #15 of the Indiana Hoosiers runs for a touchdown in the fourth quarter during the Indiana Hoosiers versus the Miami Hurricanes College Football Playoff National Championship Game Presented by AT&T on January 19, 2026, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL. (Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) — MIAMI GARDENS, FL – JANUARY 19: QB Fernando Mendoza #15 of the Indiana Hoosiers runs for a touchdown in the fourth quarter during the Indiana Hoosiers versus the Miami Hurricanes College Football Playoff National Championship Game Presented by AT&T on January 19, 2026, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL. (Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Which brings us back to the fourth quarter and Cignetti debating whether to kick that field goal. They had put in a quarterback draw for Mendoza this week — not exactly the most graceful runner — because they thought they might get the right look to call it against Miami.

In that moment, the guts, coaching and toughness that had carried Indiana to the brink of a title was worth betting on one more time.

“We had to block a little different than we normally do,” Cignetti said. “That was a 45-minute discussion in the staff room how we were going to call it and how we were going to do it. Fernando, I know he comes off as the All-American guy, but he has the heart of a lion.”

That’s what the world never saw about Indiana, not until it discarded Alabama in the quarterfinals and ran roughshod over Oregon in the semifinals. After that, everyone knew it was real.

But the beauty of college football is that you are not supposed to solve it. You’re supposed to strive and struggle, have your heart broken, come back for more. At the end of the day, the blue bloods take home the trophy.

That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how it’s always been.

And in the final game between Indiana and history, it was against Miami — a five-time national champion — playing in its home stadium. It was the ultimate test. And at the end, when Indiana committed an uncharacteristic false start penalty that prevented the Hoosiers from a game-ending first down, it gave Miami a chance to rewrite the story.

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Instead, it was a Miami native and son of a former Hurricane, Jamari Sharpe, who snagged the championship-clinching interception. Just one more layer to a story you couldn’t invent if you tried.

“It’s an amazing feeling, man, coming from where I come from, always wanted to be in the national title, always wanted to play in the Dolphins’ stadium,” Sharpe said. “Tonight was my first night being able to do that, then making the game-winning play like that, I still can’t believe it. It might hit me in the morning.”

It will all hit us when we wake up to a reality where Indiana — yes, Indiana — is the national champion. These days, the world of college football often feels chaotic, sometimes even dark. But this felt pure — not because it was Indiana, but because of how it happened.

The fundamentals. The self-belief. The three-star recruits who played like superstars, turning everything we knew about college football upside down.

“I know a lot of people thought it was never possible,” Cignett said. “It probably is one of the greatest sports stories of all time. But it’s because of these guys.”