Curt Cignetti: Indiana's national title is 'paradigm shift' - ESPN

MIAMI — What began with an «irrational belief,» Indiana center Pat Coogan said, ended with the Hoosiers' first football national championship on Monday, and perhaps, a new world order in the typically staid sport of college football.

Coach Curt Cignetti called Indiana's championship a «paradigm shift,» one that opens the door to any program willing to invest to climb to the top of the sport, just as the Hoosiers did.

«People can cling to an old way of thinking, categorizing teams as this or that or conferences as this or that,» Cignetti said, «or they can adjust to the new world, the shift in the power dynamic in college football today.»

Indiana became college football's first first-time national champion in 29 years with a 27-21 victory against Miami, but that hardly begins to capture just how unexpected this climb has been. Entering this season, Indiana had the most losses in the sport's history, and the Hoosiers won it all despite a roster that featured just eight blue-chip recruits and a host of contributors who'd followed Cignetti from James Madison two years earlier.

The last new champion in the sport was Florida in 1996-97, but those Gators were still among the best programs in the sport, with a host of stars like Danny Wuerffel, Ike Hilliard and Fred Taylor. Florida had finished in the AP top 10 five straight years before its first title and had won nine games or more in nine of the previous 13 seasons.

Before last year's sudden rise in Cignetti's first season in Bloomington, Indiana hadn't had a nine-win campaign since 1967, and the Hoosiers' 16 wins this season were more than the program compiled between 2020 and 2023 combined.

«To look back at what happened to Indiana previous to us coming — 10, 20, 50 years