{"id":1034860,"date":"2026-08-31T12:14:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1034860\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T12:14:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:14:19","slug":"who-will-be-college-footballs-next-indiana-nine-possible-answers-to-an-impossible-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1034860\/","title":{"rendered":"Who will be college football\u2019s next Indiana? Nine possible answers to an impossible question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: <\/strong> This series is part of our No Wrong Answers series, which explores the college sports<\/a> questions<\/a> you\u2019ve always been curious about \u2014 and the ones you never thought to ask.<\/p>\n

Sports fans have a strange instinct to witness something incredible, improbable, incomparable, practically unimaginable, and wonder: When will this thing that has never happened before happen again?<\/p>\n

Weird, right? We\u2019re constantly searching for the next extreme outlier, which is by definition hard to find.<\/p>\n

Indiana wrote one of the greatest stories in American sports over the last two seasons, going from losingest program in major college football history to undefeated national champions. It was an unprecedented turnaround by coach Curt Cignetti\u2019s Hoosiers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t think this was possible, and when someone does the impossible, it becomes possible,\u201d said Big Ten Network analyst Gerry DiNardo, who coached at Indiana from 2002 to \u201904.<\/p>\n

So, of course, the tempting question: Who will be the next Indiana?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see it happening,\u201d said former Notre Dame and NFL quarterback Brady Quinn, now a commentator for Fox. \u201cThere\u2019s no program that could mimic the amount of misery the program went through for such a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened to Indiana was a complete metamorphosis. The Next Indiana needs to be a caterpillar capable of turning into a beautiful butterfly. One of the most difficult things to do in college football is for a program to dramatically change its status. Over the last 35 years, Oregon did it. Clemson did it in the 2010s. Bill Snyder\u2019s Manhattan Miracle at Kansas State in the 1990s has some similarities to what Cignetti has orchestrated in Bloomington.<\/a> But Snyder\u2019s Wildcats never did reach the top of the mountain, which Cignetti and the Hoosiers did, two years removed from a 3-9 finish.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s folly to embark upon this search. But let\u2019s give it a try anyway.<\/p>\n

Three storylines to watch: Indiana, Arch and Kiffin<\/p>\n

Stewart Mandel<\/p>\n

On the bright side, almost all of the 138 schools that will compete this year in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the NCAA\u2019s top tier of college football, can be easily and almost instantly eliminated from qualification.<\/p>\n

Not in a Power 4 conference? Bye.<\/p>\n

Any college football program that has previously won a national championship is out.<\/p>\n

In fact, let\u2019s eliminate any current Power 4 football program with an all-time winning percentage above .500 \u2014 with one exception.<\/p>\n

A straight line can be drawn from Indiana to Virginia when it comes to roster-building strategy. It\u2019s all about experience, production and fit when coach Tony Elliott\u2019s program dips into the portal.<\/p>\n

Off the field, Virginia isn\u2019t the ACC\u2019s biggest spender, but there has been an undeniable change in institutional commitment to football in Charlottesville.<\/p>\n

UVA won 11 games last season and would have reached the CFP had it beaten Duke in the ACC Championship Game. The Cavaliers entered this season unranked, with all the so-called experts (self included) dismissing them as a regression candidate. Sounds a lot like where Indiana was heading into 2025. Turns out, IU was just getting ramped up.<\/p>\n

Virginia made a Week 0 statement Saturday, beating NC State 34-8 at a sold-out Scott Stadium.<\/p>\n

Virginia brings a lot of Indiana vibes into 2026, but I doubt second-tier ACC budgets are enough to win national championships. Maybe Virginia is the Next Indiana Lite.<\/p>\n

That leaves a group of programs with a long history of haplessness (listed from worst all-time winning percentage to best): Wake Forest, Northwestern, Iowa State, Kansas State, Kansas, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Rutgers, SMU, Duke and Kentucky. You\u2019ll immediately notice that many of the comps are traditionally \u201cbasketball schools,\u201d just like Indiana used to be<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned Kansas State can be scratched off. The Wildcats have been consistent winners for 30 years now.<\/p>\n

SMU is eliminated because before getting the NCAA\u2019s \u201cDeath Penalty\u201d in the 1980s, the Mustangs were awesome \u2014 no matter how they got there. And now, the program has regained its footing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That whittles the list to a final nine.<\/p>\n

All-time records via Winsipedia<\/a>. Schools are listed in alphabetical order.<\/p>\n

All have been bad enough at football for a long enough time that if they were to suddenly win a national title this season or next, you could make an argument that it would rival Indiana\u2019s remarkable rise.<\/p>\n

Now, which ones are most capable of actually putting together an Indiana-like turnaround?<\/p>\n

The revival at Indiana started with a new level of commitment from the university. IU activated what it calls \u201cthe largest living alumni base\u201d to help fund that commitment, including some of its heaviest hitters, such as billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban.<\/p>\n

Because of the above, we can eliminate Duke<\/strong> and Wake Forest<\/strong> from the list. Duke football has lately been better than most of its history, and the Blue Devils won the ACC outright for the first time in 63 years last season. Wake\u2019s last 25 years have also reset expectations. It\u2019s not an easy place to win consistently, but it\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

Still, these are two small private ACC schools. Wake Forest has the smallest enrollment in the Power 4. Commandeering the funds to play at the very top of major college football while also robustly supporting basketball feels like a stretch. In Duke\u2019s case, the Blue Devils are arguably the No. 1 brand in college basketball<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similarly in the Big 12, even with all its recent investments in football, Kansas<\/strong> is a basketball school. Unless the Jayhawks find their equivalent of Cody Campbell, the billionaire board chair who has fueled Texas Tech\u2019s emergence, it\u2019s hard to see them turning into a football powerhouse.<\/p>\n

Iowa State<\/strong> has a new coach, Jimmy Rogers, who was recently in the lower tier of Division I and brought a bunch of his old players with him to Ames. There is one Cignetti parallel, but not much else.<\/p>\n

Indiana\u2019s Big Ten rival Northwestern<\/strong>, which took over as the losingest major college football program of all time after IU went unbeaten in 2025, also gets dinged for being a private school. The Wildcats have Big Ten money flowing their way, and that new stadium is gorgeous<\/a>, but by enrollment and academic standards Northwestern is a Big Ten outlier.<\/p>\n

Rutgers<\/strong> is the other Big Ten school on the list that has been synonymous with football failure. The school that touts itself as the birthplace of college football winning a national title would be even more stunning than Indiana, I\u2019d argue. The new landscape, however, seems to be working against the Scarlet Knights. They\u2019re cashing full Big Ten checks but still struggling to make ends meet and keep up financially with conference peers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DiNardo made the case for Vanderbilt<\/strong>, another school he once coached, as the most likely Next Indiana. The longtime SEC doormats can match IU\u2019s history of futility, and if not for the Hoosiers, they might be the headlining turnaround story of college football over the past two years: The Commodores are 17-9, including the program\u2019s first 10-win season in 2025.<\/p>\n

Coach Clark Lea\u2019s staff seems to have a similarly sound eye for identifying good roster fits. Still, being the SEC\u2019s only private school makes the Commodores\u2019 ceiling lower than Indiana\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In the Magnolia State, Ole Miss seems to have morphed into a better version of itself thanks to NIL and the portal. There have been no signs in Starkville that Mississippi State<\/strong> is capable of doing the same.<\/p>\n

That leaves Kentucky<\/strong>, and here I think we\u2019re onto something: the flagship school in a state that, like Indiana, is a basketball hotbed.<\/p>\n

The Hoosiers\u2019 newfound emphasis on football probably benefitted from the men\u2019s basketball program being lost in the woods for most of the last 20 years. Making the NCAA Tournament just eight times in two decades will leave people ready to pivot.<\/p>\n

Kentucky basketball hasn\u2019t been what its fans want it to be in recent years. It\u2019s been 14 years since the last national title and 11 since the last Final Four. But the Wildcats are still an elite brand, basketball is king in the Bluegrass State and it needs to be funded as such.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean Kentucky might not be able to find another football gear. The Wildcats have actually had more football success, both recently and historically, than Indiana.<\/p>\n

But Kentucky has not won an outright SEC title since 1950, under Bear Bryant. Yes, that Bear Bryant.<\/p>\n

Amazing what a great coach can do.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the other part of finding the Next Indiana that\u2019s so tough. Maybe the best coach in college football was hiding in plain sight for a decade. Giving Cignetti his first power-conference head coaching job at 62 years old was considered a shrewd move by IU, but nobody saw this coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think to not make Cignetti the main reason (for Indiana\u2019s renaissance) is a mistake, and it\u2019s not giving him enough credit because I just think he\u2019s a unique guy who took a unique path, who happens to be a great coach,\u201d DiNardo said.<\/p>\n

New Kentucky coach Will Stein doesn\u2019t fit the Cignetti mold. The 36-year-old first-time head coach has been a fast-rising coordinator, going from UTSA to Oregon to the SEC.<\/p>\n

You couldn\u2019t help but notice one particular similarity this summer. Asked at SEC media days why he thought he could win at a place that has been an SEC afterthought for decades, Stein had his \u201cGoogle me\u201d moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think because of me, to be honest,\u201d Stein said.<\/p>\n

Stein is starting in a similar place to Cignetti, taking over a team that has won just nine games over the past two seasons. He is not bringing a load of his former players to help with the transition the way Cignetti did when he left James Madison, but Kentucky\u2019s reboot will start with The Athletic\u2019s No. 8 transfer class<\/a> in the country.<\/p>\n

Maybe Kenny Minchey, the former Notre Dame quarterback Kentucky swiped away from Nebraska in the transfer portal, will be a breakout star. Maybe Stein is the next great college football coach.<\/p>\n

Added:\n <\/p>\n

I have doubts \u2014 a lot of doubts \u2014 that the Next Indiana exists. But at some point there will be another comparable college football turnaround. That\u2019s the joy of sports. After Michael Jordan, there was LeBron James. The wonders never cease.<\/p>\n

Maybe Kentucky is on the verge of authoring its own improbable rags-to-riches tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: This series is part of our No Wrong Answers series, which explores the college sports questions…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1034861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[43],"tags":[1428,1372,1318,9443,8798,8797,8801,95000,1317,1315,1316,1380,3916,62,222,67,132,68,50643,32858,1374],"class_list":["post-1034860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-college-football","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-football","tag-indiana-hoosiers","tag-iowa-state-cyclones","tag-kansas-jayhawks","tag-kentucky-wildcats","tag-mississippi-state-bulldogs","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-northwestern-wildcats","tag-rutgers-scarlet-knights","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-vanderbilt-commodores","tag-virginia-cavaliers","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117190071010571920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1034861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}