Party like it’s 1945, Indiana! The Big Ten champs are doormats no more
By David Wasson
Published:
It feels practically impossible to put into perspective how much the world – not just the college football world… the actual world – has changed since the Indiana Hoosiers reached the summit they reached Saturday night.
For example, the United States had only 48 states the last time the Hoosiers laid claim to the outright Big Ten title – as it would be 14 more years before Alaska and Hawaii joined the union.
Chuck Yeager was still 2 years away from breaking the sound barrier, commercial flight was still a novelty, the interstate highway system wasn’t even a dream, football itself was still a decade away from being televised in color for the first time, and there actually were only 9 teams even playing football in the Big Ten.
It was 1945 when Indiana claimed its 1 and only outright Big Ten crown, as coach Bo McMillin led the Hoosiers to a 9-0-1 record – the only blemish a 7-7 tie at Northwestern. Before and since, Indiana was pretty much the punching bag of both the conference and the country by having the ignominious distinction of earning the second-most losses in FBS history.
Until Saturday night.
The Indiana Hoosiers – yes, the Indiana freaking Hoosiers – are your 2025 Big Ten champions. The Hoosiers capped a perfect 12-0 regular season by taking on and taking down the defending national champions and undisputed No. 1 team in the country, the Ohio State Buckeyes.
What does it take for a program that has been a literal afterthought on its own campus to climb that mountain? What does it take for Indiana to muster up the resources, talent, will and just plain gall to make a stunning 2-year turnaround and take down the biggest bully in the sport?
It can’t just be belief, because plenty of teams around the Big Ten started their 2025 journey with audacious dreams of celebrating amid confetti. It can’t just be pure talent, as plenty of Big Ten teams have out-recruited and outspent the Hoosiers over the past few years.
To make believers out of the nation, you gotta make believers on your own campus. And Bloomington isn’t exactly football territory. Fall afternoons at Memorial Stadium throughout history have been quaint affairs often overrun by fans from visiting teams, with the home faithful just waiting for basketball season to start so they can get serious about sports.
And why not? McMillin was the school’s last winning coach, and he retired in 1947. Sure, a slice of the Big Ten pie in 1967 with Minnesota and Purdue was worthy of some celebration, but a basketball-mad school in a basketball-mad state seemingly didn’t have the time or inclination to take football seriously.
Until 2024, that is, when Indiana decided to replace Tom Allen with a brash, unapologetic coach named Curt Cignetti – who had just ushered James Madison into the FBS and was ready for something bigger.
From the start, with Cignetti drawing immediate attention from skeptics by proclaiming “I win. Google me.” Cignetti set about manifesting that declaration into reality, starting the 2024 season with an inexplicable 10-0 start before falling to the Buckeyes 38-15 in Columbus. That season earned a College Football Playoff berth, which lasted all of 1 game before Notre Dame knocked them out.
But that was only prelude to 2025, as the Hoosiers knocked off No. 9 Illinois and No. 3 Oregon to finish the only perfect regular season in school history. Still, Ohio State loomed – larger than ever – just waiting to recalibrate everyone’s understanding of the pecking order of things. After all, the Buckeyes had not only won 30 straight meetings against Indiana but had finally vanquished the lone demon they had left when they went to Ann Arbor and outlasted Michigan the week before.
But Indiana… oh, Indiana. Armed with Heisman Trophy front-runner Fernando Mendoza and a full-throated home state crowd in Indianapolis believing at their backs, the Hoosiers put together a gritty performance from start to finish to solve the Buckeyes 13-10 and knock them off the perch they hadn’t budged off of since winning the Big Enchilada.
How does that happen? How does a perennial tomato can walk that aisle and Rocky-style knock out the champs?
“We can drag teams to the deep end because we know we are going to stick together as the strongest glue ever,” Mendoza shouted at the nation through the FOX television cameras – a network that was still 41 years away from conception when the Hoosiers last were consensus Big Ten champs.
“The Hoosiers are real and we’re here,” wide receiver Charlie Becker crowed a short time later.
For the first time in program history, Indiana woke up Sunday morning as the unquestioned No. 1 team in the country. Later in the day, Indiana will receive the No. 1 overall seed in the College Football Playoff.
And for the first time, well, ever… Indiana will fully be the hunted.
Does Cignetti, whose motivational tactics and unmitigated will hauled Indiana from worst-to-first in under 2 seasons, have what it takes to prepare the Hoosiers to climb an even higher mountain than the one they just ascended? Indiana isn’t sneaking up on anyone anymore, not after what it displayed against Ohio State, but to do it when it is expected is an entirely different skillset.
That, as the kids say, is a later problem. For now – 80 gauzy, forgettable years after that lone, dusty outright championship earned just months after the end of World War II – Indiana is once again the king of the Big Ten.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
