By: Robert Craft

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

As a south Florida breeze blew through the night, Miami native Fernando Mendoza and the Indiana Hoosiers ascended to the throne of college football — and entered the all-time lore of American sports.

Mendoza’s twisting, turning, bouncing-off-defenders touchdown in the fourth quarter will be replayed forever. This Indiana team broke all the molds, shed all their historical baggage and won the national championship.

Your 2025 Indiana Hoosiers. 16-0. National champions.The dream season is real.

Indiana. National champions. Of football.

The unflappable coach Curt Cignetti led a perennial bottom dweller to the College Football Playoff in 2024, boldly stated over the summer that wasn’t enough — hammering the phrase “No self-imposed limitations” — then marched his troops to a storybook season in his second year in Bloomington.

The Hoosiers are the first team in the history of any major-college sport to have the most all-time losses in a sport then go on to win a national championship.

“I don’t think there’s anything that compares to this, even if they don’t win Monday night,” longtime broadcaster Sean McDonough said during Friday’s CFP media day.

But they did win. The Hoosiers aren’t a plucky upstart or an underdog darling or any other warm and fuzzy placeholder.

The Indiana Hoosiers are the national champions of college football.

And they did so by marching through some of the biggest names in the sport.

Indiana finished the regular season unbeaten, then started their postseason march by handling No. 1 Ohio State 13-10 in the Big Ten title game. The Buckeyes, averaging 33.4 points per game, scored only one touchdown after an Indiana turnover deep in IU territory.

The Hoosiers postseason run is a noteworthy one: They crushed Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl, then blew Oregon’s doors off 56-22 in a CFP semifinal at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta.

When forced to play the Hurricanes on their home field for the national title, Indiana handled Miami 27-21.

Surviving multiple cheap shots from Miami that even rules analysts said should have been targeting, Mendoza pinballed himself into the end zone with 9:18 left in the game to give the Hoosiers a 24-14 lead.

It wasn’t any touchdown run. It was fourth-and-4 from the Miami 12, national championship on the line. Cignetti called timeout after third down, went for it on fourth down.

Mendoza bounced off at least six defenders before launching himself upward and sideways into the end zone. As he scored, television cameras shifted to his mother, who is in a wheelchair due to M.S., and Elsa’s reaction was one of joy, shock and near tears as she was hugged by family members.

Legendary play call. Legendary play. Legendary reaction.

Jamari Sharpe sealed the outcome when the Hurricanes had a chance to steal it away. Sharpe slipped inside a route by Keelan Marion and picked off Carson Beck on a first-and-10 from the Indiana 41, and. Sharpe made the smart play from Sharpe was— a poetic ending for a  Curt Cignetti’s -coached team — taking a knee with 0:44 on the clock.

An excessive celebration flag was thrown on Indiana after Sharpe’s interception, but after years, decades, even generations of frustration, the world can throw an excessive celebration flag on Hoosier Nation and no one will care.

The Hoosiers have six wins over top-10 teams: No. 1 Ohio State (neutral site), No. 3 Oregon (on the road), No. 5 Oregon (neutral site), No. 9 Alabama (neutral site), No. 9 Illinois (home), No. 10 Miami (the Canes’ home stadium in the national title game).

In those six wins over top-10 teams, IU has won by a combined score of 227-86

As Mendoza stood on the field waiting to do the ESPN postgame interview, red and white confetti falling on his head, his gaze drifted upward and he seemed to mouth “Thank you” to no one in particular.

And this comes with tremendous synergy: 50 years ago, Bob Knight’s 1976 basketball team went 32-0 to win the national title. So Indiana has an unbeaten football national championship and an unbeaten basketball national championship.

The Indiana Hoosiers, national champions of college football.