From longshot to champs: Indiana wins first national football title | Telander

CHICAGO - "I love you guys!" Fernando Mendoza shouted after Indiana beat Miami, 27-21, for the College Football Playoff National Championship Monday night. He was talking about his teammates, but he might as well have meant the world.

Mendoza shouts everything he says at hyper speed in post-game interviews. And, my God, he loves everything, including God, whom he praises as if the guy is there in the stands, keeping charts, rooting the Hoosiers on. (A tough call on the God favoritism, though, because his counterpart, Miami quarterback Carson Beck, prayed openly and had religious crosses scrawled in black on each of his cheeks.)

Anyway, if there’s ever been a more enthusiastic, cheerful, gung-ho football dude—Mendoza, that is, not God—it would have to be a Disney character or Happy from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Mendoza’s assuredly not a small guy, and when he launched his 6-5 frame through the air like a swimmer off the blocks on his game-sealing, fourth-quarter 12-yard touchdown run, he left a mark on college football that might never be forgotten.

MIAMI GARDENS, FLORIDA - JANUARY 19: Fernando Mendoza #15 of the Indiana Hoosiers dives for a fourth quarter touchdown against the Miami Hurricanes in the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship at Hard Rock Stadium on January 19, 2026 in

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Let’s start with Indiana University. Is there anyone on this planet who thought they’d ever be national champions in football? Not basketball, mind you. Not under Bob Knight or a chair-throwing clone. Football, the sport at which Indiana had pretty much failed since it began playing it in 1887.

Indeed, until Northwestern lost to Southern Cal and Indiana beat Penn State on the same November weekend this season, the Hoosiers had the most losses (715) of any D-1 football team in history. Now they’re No. 2, with the Wildcats having surged into the lead (or dived into the bottom) with 718.

Then there’s late-bloomer head coach Curt Cignetti who probably was available a few years ago to any major university who wanted him. Remarkably his four-year head coaching record—two years at James Madison and two at Indiana—is 46-6, with only two losses at IU. "I win," is how he describes his appeal to players.

But he also came along when the college game was turning, quite simply, into something best described as "Young Pros." Beck was asked earlier by an interviewer how classes were going for him with the big game on the line, and he answered with a smile and a twinkle in his eye that he’d graduated two years ago (from Georgia). There you have it.

Cignetti himself brought 13 James Madison players with him to Indiana, and the transfer portal opened up much of the rest for the team. Money bounces around formerly "amateur" college football. There’s the name, image and likeness money, the athletic department money, the money from boosters who might have a passing interest in players who can help their school beat, say, Ohio State and Michigan. You happen to notice Indiana alum and casual billionaire Mark Cuban wandering the Hoosier sideline, smiling like a blackjack winner? As humble and God-fearing as Mendoza and the Huricanes' Beck may be, the former is making a reported $2 million and the latter $4 million.

So this was a win for modern times. Don’t forget, playing 16 games used to be considered way too much of a beating for even NFL players to take. Until 1978 the NFL played 14 or fewer games a year. College players have escalated from 10 games (plus maybe a bowl game) to 11 to 12 to 13 and so on with no end in sight. The money is deserved.

How else did Indiana do it? Every player just doing his job, total focus, is the way Cignetti put it. And, of course, believing in one another like brothers. There were no five-star recruits on the Hoosiers.  But there were a lot of over-achievers and second-chance guys.

Mendoza’s Cuban immigrant heritage, his tight-knit family, and his open love for his wheelchair-bound mom, a former college tennis player now suffering from multiple sclerosis, is also the stuff that would make fiction sound like, Nah, come on, this can’t be true. But it’s all true.

As Mendoza said post-game, his family is stuffed with "never-ending optimism." Cignetti looked wiped out, said he was ready for a beer. He said the lesson of the undefeated national champion Hoosiers is tough, but simple: "If you keep your nose down in life and keep working, anything is possible."

Sounds crazy. But didn’t we just see it happen?