Holy crap I can't believe Indiana won a national championship in FOOTBALL

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Congrats to the Indiana Hoosiers, your champion for the 2025 college football season. A completely real and accurate sentence that I never, ever, ever thought I’d have to type in my career.

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I realize this storyline has already been beaten to death, but dang it, I want one more swing. This matchup, according to the previously known laws of the college football universe, should not have happened. It was strange enough to see Miami, a team that hadn’t won a championship in over 20 years and was left for dead by mid-October, in the game. But Indiana? In football?

For my friends who are more casual fans of FBS football or who didn’t grow up in the Midwest like I did, it’s just so hard to properly explain just how preposterous it is that Indiana is not only playing in a national title game, but that it got here by kicking ass.

I already wrote a bit on how this Indiana team worked and why it managed to defy the ironclad rules of recruiting rankings. But I want to put this game into historical context real quick.

One of the best stories I read on this matchup came from the Washington Post. It’s complete with graph after graph that demonstrates that, historically, national champions don’t come out of nowhere. Title contention usually comes after years of high-level performance, which is basically the opposite of Indiana football. Prior to this season, the Hoosiers hadn’t won a bowl game since 1991 (the Copper Bowl, which doesn’t exist anymore). Most seasons, they were closer to four wins than double-digit wins. They sucked.

Let’s start with this: Indiana beat Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game, 13-10. I grew up in Ohio, and not only could I not remember the last time Indiana actually beat my Buckeyes, but I struggle to think of too many times when the game was actually close.

The year 1988 is gonna the answer for a lot of “wait, when was the last time Indiana did something good?” type questions. The Hoosiers went 8-3-1, beating South Carolina in the Liberty Bowl and finishing 20th in the final AP Poll. They also clobbered a terrible Ohio State team (which finished under .500), 41-7.

How long ago was 1988? Long enough that Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State and Pacific all still had college football teams. Long enough ago that Arkansas was still playing, and winning, in the Southwest Conference. Long enough ago that Deion Sanders was still playing ... at Florida State. Long enough ago that the Berlin Wall still existed, Soviets were still in Afghanistan, and the Game Boy didn’t exist.

Anyway, I was born in 1987. I have absolutely no memory of anything that happened that season.

That Indiana squad beat Kentucky, Kansas and Arizona out of conference, as well as a top-10 Purdue team, to win the Big Ten and make it to the Rose Bowl, a game it lost to USC. That team finished fourth in the final AP Poll.

How long ago was that? So long ago that Indiana’s leading passer, Harry Gonso, threw for only 931 yards all year (9 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, 46.9 completion percentage). Those weren’t great numbers, but only one guy in the entire country, Sal Olivas at New Mexico State, threw for more than 2,000 yards all season.

It was so long ago that WVU was still playing football in the SoCon against teams like Davidson and VMI. It was so long ago that Xavier was still playing football. Wyoming was in the Sugar Bowl. OJ Simpson was playing for USC.

“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Sesame Street” hadn’t gone on the air yet. We hadn’t sent a manned aircraft to the moon.

The Hurricanes beat the Hoosiers, 14-7, the year before Indiana went to the Rose Bowl. Beating the 1966 edition wasn’t a big prize or anything, though, as Indiana finished 1-8-1. Fun fact: That Indiana team also lost to the other Miami, 20-10, to open the season.

Miami wasn’t a national title contending superpower in 1966, but this team did finish No. 9 in the country. Indiana beat Miami in 1964.

Yeah yeah yeah, Yale’s run was impressive. It went undefeated and outscored its opponents, 485-13.

But you know who Yale played that year? Something called the Crescent Athletic Club, the Orange Athletic Club, the Boston Athletic Association, the Volunteer (NY) Athletic Association … and Tufts. These are not college football teams!

Also, this was before a touchdown was worth six points (that happened in 1912). It was before the NCAA was founded (1906). It was before Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Georgia, Oklahoma or UNC had ever played a college football game. Before the Big Ten existed, before the forward pass was legalized and before anybody figured out how to set up a recruiting message board.

And, oh yeah, Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona weren’t even states yet.

So TL;DR, this wasn’t a real season.

Indiana, take a bow. You own the greatest rags to riches story in college football history. You can hold that 16-0 banner from an undeserving Yale. I hope somehow, after everything, Cignetti even found a moment to smile.

This is going to be a big week at Extra Points. I’ve got some original reporting I’m excited to share very soon about one of the worst college football teams in the country this season, as well as some financial stories I’ve been tracking since before the NCAA convention. We’re also making huge updates to Extra Points Library, onboarding more Extra Points Classroom classes and putting the finishing touches on a new computer game, plus adding polish on our existing titles.

I was in D.C. last week for the convention. I wrote about a few of my policy-specific takeaways from that experience, from jersey-patch valuations to legislative action on college sports.

We also had a guest post from Kristi Dosh on the various college athlete revenue-sharing contract templates floating around and what they can tell us about risks schools, and athletes, are facing.

And I interviewed some honest-to-God experts on private equity and institutional investments in college sports, to help fans, practitioners and investors better understand exactly what they’re getting into.

Now is a great time to join the Extra Points subscriber family. We’ve got big stuff coming very, very soon.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy that title, and I’ll see you on the internet.