Miami Gardens, Fla. — In front of a packed crowd of 67,227, Fernando Mendoza dropped his helmet into the chest of a defender, spun completely around with one hand and then launched forward, stretching the ball across the goal line as he crashed to the turf.
The moment felt unreal — cinematic, defiant, unforgettable. An Indiana touchdown. A championship play frozen in midair.
If Hollywood ever tells this story, they won’t need a new title.
“Hoosiers” will do just fine.
Mendoza’s fourth-down touchdown late Monday night sealed a 27–21 victory over Miami and capped one of the most astonishing seasons in college football history. Indiana finished undefeated and claimed a national championship — a result that would have sounded absurd for a program defined for nearly 140 years by losses, anonymity and indifference.
“Let me be clear,” head coach Curt Cignetti said. “We won the national championship at Indiana University. It’s real. It happened.”
Two seasons earlier, Cignetti inherited the nation’s losingest program. Now, at 64, the career coach has engineered one of the fastest and most improbable turnarounds the sport has ever seen. Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner, delivered the defining image.
He threw for 186 yards, but the numbers hardly mattered. The game — and Indiana’s season — turned on a 12-yard quarterback draw on fourth-and-4 with 9:18 remaining. Mendoza absorbed contact, broke free and hurled himself into the end zone, bloodied but unyielding.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Mendoza said. “I was going in. I’d do anything for this team.”
The touchdown gave Indiana a 24–14 lead, barely enough to survive a furious Miami rally. The Hurricanes, sluggish early, surged behind running back Mark Fletcher, who totaled 112 yards and two touchdowns to pull his team within striking distance.
“They’re the real deal,” Miami coach Mario Cristobal said. “That’s a championship football team.”
And now the College Football Playoff trophy is headed somewhere no one imagined: Bloomington, Indiana. Thousands of Hoosier fans turned Miami’s home stadium into neutral ground, many paying staggering prices to witness history. Among them was billionaire alumnus Mark Cuban, marveling at the improbability of it all.
Indiana finished 16–0, using the expanded 12-team playoff to produce the first perfect season of that length since Yale in 1894. Even President Donald Trump was in attendance, watching Indiana take a 10–0 halftime lead before withstanding Miami’s second-half surge.
The timing felt poetic. Fifty years earlier, Bob Knight’s Indiana basketball team went unbeaten to win a national championship. In an era reshaped by NIL money and constant roster movement, it’s fair to wonder whether a story like this can ever be repeated.
Mendoza is a rarity himself. A transfer from Cal who grew up just miles from Miami’s campus, he returned home and endured relentless punishment from a ferocious Hurricanes defense that sacked him three times and hit him countless others.
Still, when the season teetered, Cignetti trusted his quarterback — and his nerve.
After Fletcher’s second touchdown trimmed Indiana’s lead to three, Cignetti gambled twice on fourth down. First came a flawless 19-yard back-shoulder throw to Charlie Becker. Moments later, with the ball at the 12, Cignetti initially sent out the kicking unit — then called timeout and changed his mind.
The Call: Quarterback draw.
“We’d seen the look,” Cignetti said. “We trusted it. And we trusted him.”
Miami showed exactly the defense Indiana expected. Mendoza lowered his helmet, broke through contact and finished the play that won a national championship.
The run instantly joined the sport’s iconic moments, evoking memories of John Elway’s helicopter dive in Super Bowl XXXII. It also did nothing to dent Mendoza’s standing as a projected No. 1 pick in the upcoming NFL draft.
“My running style isn’t pretty,” Mendoza said. “But on fourth down, you don’t worry about that. You just go.”
Miami proved it belonged on the sport’s biggest stage. Barely sneaking into the playoff, the Hurricanes peaked at the right time. Fletcher’s 57-yard touchdown run early in the third quarter ignited the comeback and changed the game’s tone.
But the margin was thin. After pinning Indiana deep, Miami surrendered a blocked punt when Mikail Kamara blew through protection. Isaiah Jones recovered, forcing the Hurricanes into chase mode.
They had one final shot. Driving into Indiana territory late, Miami quarterback Carson Beck fired a desperation pass that was intercepted by Jamari Sharpe — a Miami native who made sure the only miracle this season would belong to Indiana.
The scale of the achievement is staggering. In 1976, Indiana was so overmatched that Lee Corso once stopped a broadcast to photograph a scoreboard showing the Hoosiers briefly leading Ohio State — before losing 47–7. Decades of futility followed.
Not anymore.
Indiana football — the Hoosiers — are national champions.
“I know people thought it was impossible,” Cignetti said. “This might be one of the greatest stories sports has ever told.”
