Ever<\/em>,\u201d said Cuban, who won an NBA title as the Dallas Mavericks\u2019 owner and is now helping fund his alma mater\u2019s roster. \u201cI mean, the Miracle on Ice, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything compared to this. To go from the outhouse to the penthouse, to win 16 games in a row, I mean, who\u2019d have thunk? I don\u2019t think anybody could ever imagine in their wildest of wildest dreams.\u201d<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
Cignetti had this dream early in life. The son of College Football Hall of Fame coach Frank Cignetti, who got fired after four years at West Virginia but became a legend in D-II, spent his childhood envisioning himself as \u201ca Bear Bryant kind of coach.\u201d But the business never handed him those cards to play.<\/p>\n
As he worked his way up the ladder, he too often landed on coaching staffs that lost \u2014 Rice, Temple, Pittsburgh \u2014 until Nick Saban hired him as the recruiting coordinator and receivers coach at the beginning of his Alabama dynasty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat tied it together for me,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cI was hitting the big 5-0 and wasn\u2019t a coordinator, wasn\u2019t on track to get a head-coaching job and didn\u2019t want to be a 60-year-old assistant. I saw what those lives looked like as a kid. I took an unprecedented chance in this business.\u201d<\/p>\n
He became the head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the same place his father coached. As far as he was concerned, the Bear Bryant dream was long gone. It turned out the journey was only beginning.<\/p>\n
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From IUP to Elon to James Madison and then Indiana \u2014 the worst of the worst. Nobody won there, and even those who had a little success eventually got fired too because nothing was built to last there. It was a graveyard. At least maybe Cignetti could make some money.<\/p>\n
A photograph of Indiana\u2019s nearly-empty Memorial Stadium, taken during the first game of the Cignetti era in August 2024, began to go viral Monday on social media. It was a snapshot of what Hoosier football used to be: a program that had been dead for decades, a lost cause, a waste of time.<\/p>\n
You couldn\u2019t even really call Indiana\u2019s fans long-suffering. In basketball, the sport Indiana fans used to care about above all else, they\u2019ve suffered. But is there really any suffering if there\u2019s no hope in the first place?<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere wasn\u2019t an emphasis on football, plain and simple,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cBasketball school.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then, he just \u2026 changed it. Some of the best parts of his James Madison teams came with him. He demanded investment and attitude. He out-evaluated everyone in the transfer portal, and as Indiana\u2019s 2024 season unfolded, leading to a first-round playoff loss at Notre Dame, it was clear he was outcoaching a lot of the game\u2019s stalwarts, too.<\/p>\n\n\n
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MIAMI GARDENS, FL – JANUARY 19: QB Fernando Mendoza #15 of the Indiana Hoosiers runs for a touchdown in the fourth quarter during the Indiana Hoosiers versus the Miami Hurricanes College Football Playoff National Championship Game Presented by AT&T on January 19, 2026, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL. (Photo by Peter Joneleit\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhich brings us back to the fourth quarter and Cignetti debating whether to kick that field goal. They had put in a quarterback draw for Mendoza this week \u2014 not exactly the most graceful runner \u2014 because they thought they might get the right look to call it against Miami.<\/p>\n
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In that moment, the guts, coaching and toughness that had carried Indiana to the brink of a title was worth betting on one more time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to block a little different than we normally do,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cThat was a 45-minute discussion in the staff room how we were going to call it and how we were going to do it. Fernando, I know he comes off as the All-American guy, but he has the heart of a lion.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what the world never saw about Indiana, not until it discarded Alabama in the quarterfinals and ran roughshod over Oregon in the semifinals. After that, everyone knew it was real.<\/p>\n
But the beauty of college football is that you are not supposed to solve it. You\u2019re supposed to strive and struggle, have your heart broken, come back for more. At the end of the day, the blue bloods take home the trophy.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s how it\u2019s supposed to be. That\u2019s how it\u2019s always been.<\/p>\n
And in the final game between Indiana and history, it was against Miami \u2014 a five-time national champion \u2014 playing in its home stadium. It was the ultimate test. And at the end, when Indiana committed an uncharacteristic false start penalty that prevented the Hoosiers from a game-ending first down, it gave Miami a chance to rewrite the story. <\/p>\n
Instead, it was a Miami native and son of a former Hurricane, Jamari Sharpe, who snagged the championship-clinching interception. Just one more layer to a story you couldn\u2019t invent if you tried.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing feeling, man, coming from where I come from, always wanted to be in the national title, always wanted to play in the Dolphins\u2019 stadium,\u201d Sharpe said. \u201cTonight was my first night being able to do that, then making the game-winning play like that, I still can\u2019t believe it. It might hit me in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It will all hit us when we wake up to a reality where Indiana \u2014 yes, Indiana \u2014 is the national champion. These days, the world of college football often feels chaotic, sometimes even dark. But this felt pure \u2014 not because it was Indiana, but because of how it happened.<\/p>\n
The fundamentals. The self-belief. The three-star recruits who played like superstars, turning everything we knew about college football upside down. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know a lot of people thought it was never possible,\u201d Cignett said. \u201cIt probably is one of the greatest sports stories of all time. But it\u2019s because of these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Read More<\/a> Dan Wolken<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. \u2014 About half an hour before Curt Cignetti stood on a stage and lifted a trophy, before Mark Cuban put on the T-shirt they hand out to the national champions, before tens of thousands of fans sang ABBA\u2019s \u201cFernando\u201d in unison as red-and-white confetti fell on the field at Hard Rock Stadium<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":886447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38832,3790,80344],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fernando","category-football","category-mendoza"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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