How This 'College Football Miracle' Came to Be

Indiana is the new champion of college football, and sportswriters are making the case that it would be a mistake to underestimate that extraordinary reality. In fact, writes Stewart Mandel at the Athletic, this "was the most remarkable story in modern sports history," not just college football. Mandel ticks off his reasons, including 64-year-old coach Curt Cignetti, who "defied the modern coaching trajectory in every way." Most coaching giants made their names in their 30s or 40s. "Cignetti did not get his first power-conference head-coaching job until he was 62, and yet he embraced the sport's new roster-building model more feverishly than any of them and shot straight to the top of the ladder."

• New game: Yes, the college game has changed in big ways now that players get paid under licensing deals and they're allowed to transfer from team to team more freely. Name, Image, and Likeness deals "aided the possibility of leveling the playing field, but Indiana did not pace the pack for spending, nor is this roster overflowing with former blue-chippers," writes Blake Toppmeyer at USA Today. He notes that the first four champions in the NIL era were Georgia, Georgia, Michigan, and Ohio State. "Not exactly a run of plucky underdogs."
• Turnaround: Plus, this is perennial football loser Indiana, writes Christopher Kamrani, also at the Athletic. "Hyperbole isn't even needed when discussing Indiana's history of being at the bottom of the heap," he writes. "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."
• Stars aligned: In short, this was a "college football miracle," is the argument of Alex Kirshner at Slate. He does an in-depth analysis of all of the above, finding that Cignetti arrived at just right the time, with just the right Division II experience, to take advantage of the game's new rules. And he's not sure any underdog will be able to repeat the magic as quickly. "The last year a team won its program's first national title was 1996, when the Florida Gators did it," he writes. "A new economic structure will create new first-time champs on a quicker timeline than that going forward. It will just never, ever yield a two-year flip job like the one Indiana just put on."

Having John Mellencamp as a diehard fan probably didn't hurt.