It wasn’t even that long ago when Indiana football was a forgettable program that collected losses year-in, year-out. They looked so far away from being a consistent winning program, let alone a national championship-winning, 16-0 squad, but here they are, thanks to excellent recruitment from head coach Curt Cignetti and incredible play from quarterback Fernando Mendoza, standing on top of the college football world with a 27-21 win over Miami in the national championship game.
Before Cignetti came in, Indiana was coming off a brutal three-year stretch in which they won a grand total of nine games against 27 defeats. But the miracle worker disguised as head coach in Cignetti has worked wonders, and a lot of pundits are eating their words as a result. In fact, an old take from Texas football head coach Steve Sarkisian that called a 16-0 season an impossibility is resurfacing after Indiana came in and did the improbable.
“The idea of somebody’s gonna go 16-0 in college football. Man, put a statue up somewhere of that team. Because I just don’t know if that’s gonna happen again,” Sarkisian said back in May 2025.
Less than a year ago, Steve Sarkisian said a 16-0 season is super unlikely to ever happen again
Indiana already did it
— Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) January 20, 2026
Well, somebody now has to be prepping a statue somewhere to celebrate the 2025 Indiana Hoosiers’ undefeated season. Right?
Indiana football joins exclusive club of 16-0 college football teams
Only twice in the history of college football has a team ever gone undefeated with no ties through 16 games, with only the 1984 Yale Bulldogs and the 2019 North Dakota Bison being the only teams to ever pull off such a feat.
Indiana football has rocketed up the totem pole, and under Cignetti’s watch, it’s unlikely for them to fall down anytime soon. The loss of Mendoza to the NFL Draft will hurt the program, but expect Cignetti to keep it rolling for the next few seasons even as they undergo a few changes.
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