The Big Picture: Wrecking Ball Indiana Looks Unstoppable Ahead of CFP Title Game

Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta) — It’s enough already. 

It’s enough calling Indiana "college football’s Cinderella." It's enough cooing at the Hoosiers' success like we’re looking at newborn baby babble. 

It's enough wondering aloud if Indiana — the No. 1-ranked team in the country and the only undefeated squad standing — is simply better than everybody else in every phase of the game.

This Indiana team, second-year coach Curt Cignetti's Indiana team, is a wrecking ball. It is better. 

Who else but a Titan could out-score No. 9 Alabama and then No. 5 Oregon by a combined score of 94-25?

There are still firsts for this program: a Prometheus emerging from the cliffs to once again bring us mere mortals fire. The Hoosiers can become the first first-time national champion in the sport since Florida in 1996. That Gators team finished 12-1. 

That's how it felt late Friday night at the Peach Bowl inside the stadium that was mostly filled with red, whether you liked it or not. Indiana fans have longed for this and showed up with such a formidable presence, you might have thought the game was in Bloomington.

ATLANTA: E.J. Williams Jr. of the Indiana Hoosiers catches a pass for a touchdown against the Oregon Ducks during the 2025 College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on January 09, 2026. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

The 1996 Hoosiers finished 3-8 with just one win against a Power 4 team (Purdue), which, for 139 years, had been the standard for Indiana — a university with a football program so bad that it helped popularize the phrase "basketball school."

Not then, and, frankly, not even to start 2025, did many believe the Hoosiers would ever compete in the national championship game.