It still doesn’t feel real. Indiana, which until early November still held the belt as losingest team in NCAA football history, won the national championship. It wasn’t a fluke, it wouldn’t even make a good sports movie, the Hoosiers just kicked ass for 16 straight games.

If Indiana can do it, anyone can.

Well, that’s at least what a lot of schools are going to tell themselves and their boosters this offseason. It’s true, in the purest form, just like it’s true that anyone can make a hole-in-one at Augusta National’s No. 12. In reality, just about half of the best golfers in the world even hit that green during the Masters, and more Power 5 programs are going to hire coaches that last less than three years than not in pursuit of replicating Indiana’s feats. Success isn’t a given, not without a lot of infrastructure and money to support it.

Plenty of doubters are going to paint the Hoosiers’ win as tainted, a product of the early transfer portal era and Mark Cuban’s money. The paper watchers are wrong about that, of course, but it would be a funny argument to make even if it were true. If Indiana outspent everyone else by $15 million, they’d have underpaid for the experience and production they got on the field.

Instead, Curt Cignetti and his staff have laid out a blueprint for the future of college football and it looks a lot like what worked in the past: get buy-in from the administration, identify talent no matter what level it comes from, allocate resources to acquire and maintain that talent level, and coach your ass off to develop those players. It might be simple, but that doesn’t make it easy.

Sometimes things just make sense.

Look, I’ve poked a fair bit of fun at Carson Beck this season and not all of it was totally fair, but everyone on the internet know that a backbreaking interception was coming as soon as Indiana kicked a field goal to go up by six late in the fourth quarter. What I didn’t exactly expect was just how bad the throw itself would be.

A good throw doesn’t necessarily end with a touchdown and orange confetti on the field – Indiana had decent enough coverage and the sideline made for a tight window to drop the ball into – but there was no reason to put this ball into any kind of danger. On first down, with nearly a minute left, the Hurricanes had plenty of time to keep marching down the field. Putting the nose of the ball on the endzone pylon would’ve given Keelan Marion a chance to reel in the highlight catch and at worst fallen harmlessly incomplete.

Instead, that ball falls fifteen full yards short of where it needed to be. Indeed, if Jamari Sharpe hadn’t read the throw perfectly, safety Amare Ferrell probably gets his hands on the ball instead. In a game where Miami and Beck did so many things right to have a shot at upending the best team in the country, this play never had a chance.

One more note to twist the dagger a bit further into The U – there couldn’t have been a more script-worthy recipient of that errant pass than Sharpe. He’s a Miami native (along with a number of other prominent Hoosiers), sure, but he also has a famous relative who played for the Hurricanes. Glenn Sharpe, Jamari’s uncle, was the defensive back called for the controversial pass interference in 2001’s national championship overtime against Ohio State. You know, the last time Miami was on this stage.

Storm Warning

I do want to say a few nice things about Miami. The Hurricanes played Indiana better than anyone else all season, and very well could have won this game. A suffocating defense kept the game just close enough for Miami’s offense to finally kick into gear and stage an improbable comeback attempt.

Reuben Bain and Akheem Mesidor combined for three sacks and made the second half an absolute nightmare for Fernando Mendoza. They forced the Heisman winner into an unfathomable second-half line of 4/13 with just 47 net yards, and gave the offense a chance at the end. I’m truly not sure what else they could have done. 

The offense featured some bright spots too, and you really have to wonder why they couldn’t get Malachi Toney just a few more touches early in the contest. Toney, if you want to suddenly feel every ache and pain in your lower back all at once, was born in the year 2007, by the way – just a week after Kanye West released Graduation.

As Larry Munson might say: My God, a Freshman. If Miami is going to return to this stage in the next few years, he’ll be a big reason why.

Special Forces

Unfortunately for the Hurricanes, the game is played in three phases. While they nearly matched Indiana on offense and especially defense, the third phase was ultimately their undoing.

First, the missed field goal at the end of the first half. You can partially blame this one on Mario Cristobal’s game management – nearly every analytics model available would have suggested going for it on 4th and 2 at the Indiana 32 with enough time left to take a handful of shots at the end zone if you convert – but it was also just a bad kick. Those three points would have been helpful at the end!

And then, the big one. A punt so seemingly inconsequential that Indiana was in punt safe formation ended up being the turning point in the game.

Go watch that replay again. Watch it two more times. I cannot emphasize this enough: the Hoosiers were not trying to block this kick at all. That can’t happen in a game against an FCS opponent, letting it happen against the best-coached, most detail-oriented team in the sport is a flashing red light that you aren’t prepared to find the marginal inches needed to win a national title. 

Once that block happens, Miami is clawing just to stay alive. And, full credit to the Hurricanes, they did stay alive. But that block gives Indiana the cushion it needed to finally get back on the front foot and let its Heisman winner do his work.

Closing Time

It’s easy to be cynical about things, especially the current era of college football. But sometimes, you have to sit back and enjoy watching history unfold. It’s pretty cool to watch a moment in real-time and know that not only will it be replayed every time we get together for another national title game, but that plans are already being made to turn it into a statue in Bloomington, Indiana.

Once again, and maybe it feels a little more real this time: Indiana just won the national championship, in football.

I just want to step back a year and show you my favorite Fernando Mendoza play from his time at Cal. It’s a small thing, but I think the awareness to make himself available shows the creativity and toughnessthat flourished in Bloomington. Guys who just have the will and wherewithal to make plays are the most valuable thing a rising program can have, and you can see exactly why he popped up on Cignetti’s radar with tape like this.

This is an incomplete list, but I wanted to just round up a few of my favorite moments from the 2025 college football season. We’ll keep adding to this list as we go, but if I missed anything, leave it in the comments below.

Good night, and thanks for reading along this year. We’ll keep going throughout the silly season, with a little college football and a little bit of everything else until the next kickoff.