NBA

College football surprise: Miami and Indiana meet for the title in a game no one has seen before.

ballervisions 2026年1月19日

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) – One program has endured the longest losing streak in college football history. The other has enjoyed its fair share of glory and infamy – though all are old enough to be packaged in crude documentaries, or retold among the tall tales of a bygone era.

Indiana and Miami play for the national title on Monday night, and if that’s scratching your head you’re thinking “Who?” anything else?” then you are not alone.

Even as the new world of paid players and quick transfers from school to school shook the college sports scene, no one thought it would come together like this. And while both schools have been dominant of late, both are listed as 100-1 long shots to win the championship at some point this season.

“When I got here,” explained second-year Indiana coach and conversion artist Curt Cignetti, “I was trying to figure out if the fans were dead or just on life support.”

Who could blame them?

Before Cignetti’s arrival for the 2024 season, the Hoosiers had compiled 713 losses in 130-plus years of football. For some, buying football seats was a necessity to squeeze the wallet to get access to tickets to basketball games coached by Bob Knight and his successors – the best team and the best draw.

Cignetti, whose resume looks like the departure board of Delta Airlines, has arrived with almost no fanfare, at least on a national level.

Asked different versions of the same question over and over again at a signing day news conference in his first season that surprised many with how good it was, Cignetti got an answer that will end up in his grave: “Very easy. I win. Google me.”

In some ways, Indiana’s resurgence is a product of a new era in college football, where players are getting paid and moving freely between schools. Cignetti started this resurgence by bringing in 13 players from his former job, James Madison.

In a way, this is about a coach running a program and doing it the old fashioned way.

Quarterback Fernando Mendoza transferred from Cal to Indiana last year because “I felt like coach Cignetti could help me get to where he thought I could be as a quarterback.” A two-star recruit out of high school, he won the Heisman Trophy this season. The Hoosiers, who call themselves “the underdogs,” at least, have two four-star players on their roster.

“I’ve never looked at a star in my life,” Cignetti said of the random lineup system that doesn’t mean anything until those players put on the pads. “If a guy can play hard and have the right things and the intangibles, we can work with him and he will improve.”

Indiana claims the largest alumni base in the world, several thousand of them collecting what may be the toughest ticket ever to the title game, ironically, to be played on Miami’s home field. They also have Mark Cuban, who has added many millions to the effort. Indiana’s football budget has grown from $24 million to $61 million starting in 2021.

“It takes a village and it costs money,” Cignetti said. “But it’s not just about money.”

Same story, different plan in Miami

To some extent, Miami can agree with that.

This is a program with deep, colorful roots. A 2018 ESPN documentary about the Notre Dame-Miami rivalry is called “Catholics vs. Prisoners.” Notre Dame is a Catholic school.

Names from the ’80s and ’90s – Michael Irvin, Jimmy Johnson, Bernie Kosar and the infamous developer Nevin Shaprio – disappeared to be replaced by nothing.

It wasn’t until the product of those ’80s and ’90s, Mario Cristobal, arrived in 2021 that things started to look good again for the ‘Canes.

“I thought we were a group of guys that no one believed in who changed history by playing with unbelievable effort,” Cristobal said of his old teams. “It was not easy, it was bad, but no one doubted the brotherhood.”

Like Indiana, the ‘Canes are a product of a new era of iconography in college football, combined with a strong passion from a coach who was around long before that began.

“Absolutely zero,” said Cristobal when asked what has changed as a coach when the dollars start flowing and the players start leaving.

“If you have to change the way you train because you are afraid of the portal, you are not doing it right in the first place,” he said. “You have to push people, demand by force but don’t humiliate, don’t compromise. I don’t believe that should change.”

The biggest portal news involving Miami is about the upcoming players, not the ones left out.

Last year, in two episodes that felt revolutionary at the time but are now business as usual, quarterback Carson Beck and defensive back Xavier Lucas left their old schools in Miami.

Beck raised eyebrows because he was leaving Georgia — a perennial rival — to play a fifth season at a school that hadn’t won a title in decades. The reported $4 million in NIL probably helped.

Lucas became a litmus test when his old school, Wisconsin, sued Miami, alleging that Cristobal’s staff persuaded the freshman to violate his NIL contract with the Badgers.

“I didn’t pay any attention to it,” said Lucas, who grew up near Pompano Beach. “I wanted to come back and help the boys succeed.”

If this matchup from the outside proves anything, it’s that in the new, more expensive era of college football, anyone can win.

“Indiana shows that if you don’t have history or culture, you can still reach the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world,” said Chris Fowler, who will call the game for ESPN and agreed to the unexpected title game to be a part of. “Cignetti just showed you how.”

As did Cristobal in Miami.

“There are no more excuses,” Fowler said.

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