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This game marked the regular-season resumption of that dormant series, an overdue meeting that stirred souls on both sides of the nearby Ohio River. And yet, here, it was the second-biggest sporting event of the moment.<\/p>\n
At 7:58 p.m., with Indiana holding an 8\u20133 lead, the audio in Bearno\u2019s switched back to the Heisman telecast. Shortly after 8 p.m. Mendoza was announced as the first winner of the award in Indiana history.<\/a> The place erupted.<\/p>\n \u201cHeis-Mendoza! Heis-Mendoza!\u201d The Indiana faithful chanted.<\/p>\n Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza holds the Heisman Trophy as he celebrates with teammates. \/ Brad Penner-Imagn Images<\/p>\n Then Bearno\u2019s went silent as Mendoza gave a poised, passionate, gracious acceptance speech. An old man wiped tears from his eyes. Younger faces beamed. In the silent background on a few TVs, Indiana and Kentucky played the sport that has always defined them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nobody noticed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something I never thought I would see in my lifetime,\u201d says Greg McMinoway, an Indiana native and Gulf War veteran who lives in New Albany. \u201cIt feels like it\u2019s surreal. I mean, seriously, it just feels like it\u2019s a dream come true. I\u2019m happy for every Indiana fan that\u2019s always been through the crappiest. We were the worst Power 4 team of all time, and now we\u2019re the No. 1 overall seed and our quarterback just won the Heisman.\u201d<\/p>\n This was the moment when something impossible happened\u2014a gridiron accomplishment completely overshadowed a circle-the-date basketball game. For the first time, Indiana can call itself a football school<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rick Bozich went to school at Merrillville Junior High one day in 1967 proudly wearing a new button. His father, Alex, a boilermaker at Inland Steel in East Chicago, Ind.\u2014not to be confused with a Purdue Boilermaker\u2014had gone to the Indiana University Northwest campus bookstore in Gary and purchased it for his son:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re Rose Bowl Bound.\u201d<\/p>\n After decades of football futility, the Hoosiers had finished in a tie for first in the Big Ten with Minnesota and Purdue. They were awarded the Rose Bowl spot via league tiebreaker\u2014the school that had gone the longest time without playing in the game got the bid, and the Hoosiers had never been in their history.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indiana lost 14\u20133 to a USC powerhouse led by O.J. Simpson. As for the whereabouts of the button?<\/p>\n \u201cI lost it,\u201d Bozich says. \u201cAnd after I lost it, I figured I don\u2019t need it. It\u2019s never going to happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n Fifty-eight years later, it\u2019s happening again.<\/p>\n Bozich went to Indiana, graduated in 1975 and had a decorated career as a sports writer before retiring in July. On more than one occasion, while watching the Hoosiers lose yet again from the Memorial Stadium press box, Bozich pantomimed the dribbling and shooting of a basketball\u2014his way of saying that it\u2019s time to turn the page to the sport that mattered most.<\/p>\n \u201cI learned at an early age not to expect much [from the football program] and be happy for what you got,\u201d Bozich says. \u201cIt was almost like they were always going through the motions. It\u2019s like there was never any urgency to fix it. I mean, if Wisconsin\u2019s good and Iowa\u2019s good and Northwestern\u2019s good, why is Indiana 2\u20139?\u201d<\/p>\n The biggest reason is the five national championship banners that sway in the mysterious breezes of Assembly Hall.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indiana coach Bob Knight with Steve Alford during the 1987 NCAA basketball national championship game. The Hoosiers won the title, the fifth in their history. \/ Rich Clarkson\/ NCAA Photos, Indianapolis Star via Imagn Content Services, LLC<\/p>\n The state was an early and enthusiastic adopter of basketball, which served as a popular winter activity for Indiana boys in the early 1900s after farm crops had been harvested in the fall. Hoosier Hysteria, the fabled high school state tournament, became a very big deal very quickly. Butler Fieldhouse, which opened in 1928 with a seating capacity of 15,000, was the largest gym in the country for decades, and it became the epicenter of that tournament. Fans came from every corner of the state to fill those seats.<\/p>\n Around the same time, Purdue was emerging as a national basketball power with a hard-edged guard named John Wooden. Indiana was also rising under coach Everett Dean, then Branch McCracken led the Hoosiers to the second NCAA tournament championship, in 1940.\u00a0<\/p>\n The athletic culture of the state coalesced around the roundball. The path to athletic glory for both schools was indoors, not outdoors. Football fever was primarily confined to the Catholic college up in South Bend. For decades, one of the most common fan types in the state was those who rooted for Notre Dame in football and Indiana in basketball.<\/p>\n The football-as-an-afterthought dynamic became even more pronounced at Indiana after the arrival of Bob Knight in 1971. Three national titles and a cult of personality ensued. The more he won, the bigger his presence became\u2014and the less football seemed to matter.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of it was because of Knight,\u201d Bozich says. \u201cI think people were just so enraptured with basketball and Knight and the power of Knight\u2019s personality that they didn\u2019t really care about football. It was sort of tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically, it took a former Knight student manager to make the move that changed football at Indiana.<\/p>\n Scott Dolson was an Indiana graduate who went to work in the athletic department not long after receiving his diploma. He saw every kind of football coach come and go: solid Bill Mallory had several good seasons but ran out of gas in the mid-1990s; Cam Cameron was a former Indiana quarterback with NFL experience who didn\u2019t translate; Gerry DiNardo had three very bad seasons; Terry Hoeppner had the program headed in the right direction before being felled by cancer; Bill Lynch and Kevin Wilson were just more of the same, winning less than 40% of their games.<\/p>\n By the time Dolson was promoted to athletic director in 2020, Tom Allen was midway through his tenure and showing promise with back-to-back winning records in 2019 and \u201920. But three straight losing seasons ensued, and Dolson bit the bullet on a sizable buyout to make a change. At that point, with an FBS-record 715 all-time defeats, there was nothing left to lose.<\/p>\n Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson, football coach Curt Cignetti and school president Pamela Whitten during Cignetti\u2019s introduction in 2023. \/ Rich Janzaruk\/Herald-Times \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/p>\n Predecessor Fred Glass had begun bringing Indiana\u2019s facilities up to par in the Big Ten. Dolson knew he needed to nail the coaching hire, and had done a deep study on what kind of coaches succeeded at basketball-first schools like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky and Kansas. His checklist of attributes:\u00a0<\/p>\n The Venn diagram matching those needs with Curt Cignetti\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 at James Madison and elsewhere was almost a complete overlay. He was the guy.<\/p>\n \u201cCig checked every box,\u201d Dolson says. \u201cHe was everything we wanted. We wanted someone who really had a plan, not a one-hit wonder. And so from the minute I first talked to him on the phone, it was like he had our blueprint that we put together.\u201d<\/p>\n What came next was the barrage of bluster that first made people pay attention to him. Cignetti declared that he was going to take Indiana to the Big Ten title game in a year. He took the microphone in Assembly Hall at a basketball game to declare that \u201cPurdue sucks. But so do Michigan and Ohio State.\u201d He dropped his most famous line: \u201cI win. Google me.\u201d<\/p>\n Eyes rolled at the loudmouth nobody talking up a dead-end program.<\/p>\n \u201cI laughed,\u201d Bozich says. \u201cDoes he really know where he\u2019s at? Aren\u2019t you supposed to underpromise and overdeliver? Some of my friends were like, \u2018This guy\u2019s an idiot.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But Cignetti did get the fans\u2019 attention, which quickly turned into admiration after a 4\u20130 start in 2024. Still, admiration hadn\u2019t quite translated to action. Indiana fans, especially the students, were infamous for partying like rock stars at the pregame tailgates but either never entering the stadium or leaving at halftime. These were the same students who would line up for hours to get into Assembly Hall for big basketball games.<\/p>\n Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti celebrates after winning the Big Ten championship game. \/ Robert Goddin-Imagn Images<\/p>\n Prior to Indiana\u2019s 2024 Big Ten home opener against Maryland, Cignetti sent an email to the students requesting that they not only attend the game, but stay for the entirety.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe need you there for the opening kick,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe need you there in the stands being loud in the first quarter. And the second quarter. And in the third. And, most importantly, in the fourth.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the clock hits zero and we\u2019re 5\u20130, I want you there to be able to celebrate a historic win with us.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tailgates can wait. The parties can wait. If you need to study, that can wait, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Indiana beat the Terrapins 42\u201328, and a bond with the student body was forged.<\/p>\n \u201cThe students all showed up and it was raining,\u201d says Don Fischer, Indiana\u2019s radio play-by-play man since 1973. \u201cAnd they all stayed. From that point forward, it\u2019s just been banzai bananas. Football in Indiana has never been like this and I hope it doesn\u2019t end anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the truest measures of the changing priorities came last spring, when Indiana did its annual meet-and-greet speaking engagement with fans at Huber\u2019s in Starlight, Ind. The event is timeless in many aspects, with hundreds of fans turning out at a sprawling rural farm to hear from the program\u2019s most prominent coaches. The order of the speakers has never varied\u2014the men\u2019s basketball coach always is the headliner and always goes last.<\/p>\n This year, even with a new basketball coach in Darian DeVries, the headliner was the football coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCignetti closed the deal and stayed around,\u201d Bozich says. \u201cPeople wanted to take pictures of him.\u201d<\/p>\n The program\u2019s ascension, dizzying last year, has only accelerated this year. It has upset the natural order of things at Indiana to the point that, if constructing a Mount Rushmore of Hoosier athletes, a celebrated men\u2019s basketball figure has got to go to make room for Mendoza. He steps in alongside nine-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Mark Spitz and probably two of the following three all-time basketball greats: Isiah Thomas, Steve Alford and someone from the undefeated 1975\u201376 team, probably Scott May.<\/p>\n \u201cThese guys will be sainted there forever,\u201d Bozich says. \u201cIf they end up winning it, it\u2019s the most improbable story in the history of college football. And nothing else is close.\u201d<\/p>\n More College Football from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n Listen to SI\u2019s college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, below or on Apple<\/a> and Spotify<\/a>. Watch the show on SI\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW ALBANY, Ind. \u2014 Fat snowflakes were landing softly in the parking lot of Bearno\u2019s Pizza here on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":482530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-482529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115814612610121103","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482529","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=482529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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