Hoosiers and their fans brave a strong winter storm to celebrate the school’s 1st national title

By Canadian Press on January 24, 2026.

The Indiana Hoosiers took one last stroll from Assembly Hall to Memorial Stadium on Saturday, waving to the crowd, signing autographs and trading fist bumps with the fans who lined the way.

Then the Hoosiers walked onto their home field for the first time as national champions.

This was a scene even the most loyal Indiana fans couldn’t have fathomed when Curt Cignetti was hired to coach major college football’s losingest program in 2023. A little more than two years later, here they were, folding chairs on the field, trophies lined up across the dais and a series of presentations to cap the celebration.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect season.

“From the bottom of my heart, thank you Hoosier Nation,” Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza said just before the 35-minute ceremony ended with players, coaches and fans singing the school’s fight song together. “Playing here has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. Thank you so much and again, myself, my teammates are forever indebted to you guys. God bless. Go Hoosiers!”

Heisman Trophy Trust chief executive officer Jeff Price brought the trophy that will stay on campus permanently. University president Pam Whitten promised students at the half-filled stadium this wouldn’t be their last football championship. Some of the team’s seniors even helped local native John Mellencamp belt out “Hurts So Good” before, naturally, hearing “We Are The Champions” blaring across the public address system.

“The greatest university in the country is now the home to the greatest football team in the United States of America,” Whitten said to loud roars.

But the fans, like this team, had to tough it out Saturday.

The temperature barely hovered above 10 degrees, wind chills were below zero and the forecast called for up to a foot of snow for the celebration of major college football’s first 16-0 season since the 1890s.

Players, many of whom came from warmer states such as Virginia or Florida, were bundled up, too, and wasted little time in making their remarks.

But some adverse weather wasn’t going to deter the players or these long-suffering football fans, who spent years just hoping the program could get back to respectability when it seemed like winning a championship — Big Ten or national — was unreachable.

Now, thanks in large part to Cignetti and the coaches and 13 players who followed him from James Madison, Indiana begins next season as the defending national champs, defending Big Ten champs and with both the nation’s longest winning streak and nation’s longest home winning streak.

“First of all, I can’t put into words what Indiana, the fans, my coach and my teammates have meant to me,” said All-American linebacker Aiden Fisher, one of those who followed Cignetti. “These two years have changed my life for the better and thank you, God, for making me a Hoosier.”

It didn’t take long for Cignetti to deliver on his promise to win. The Hoosiers posted a school-best 11-2 in mark in 2024. Yet many of these Hoosiers fans who had watched so many other promising starts unravel were skeptical the Hoosiers could replicate that success in 2025.

They didn’t. Indiana surpassed those numbers with a season for the record books.

The Hoosiers won games by huge margins, with late-game heroics and at sites that seemed impossibly challenging such as Oregon and Penn State. They beat traditional powers Ohio State and Alabama along with Oregon again as their storybook journey headed to Miami for the title game. And there, the school’s first Heisman Trophy winner finished off the 27-21 victory on Miami’s home field with one powerful, spinning touchdown run that encapsulated Indiana’s fight to the top.

It was so good Mendoza started making the television rounds this week, booking appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Good Morning America” before announcing Friday that he would enter this year’s draft.

First, though, he wanted to make one more stop in Bloomington.

“The Heisman Trophy is the ultimate team award” Mendoza told the crowd. “I want to thank God, thank the Heisman Trophy Foundation and thank IU.”

Then it was back to the usually stone-faced Cignetti, who appeared to genuinely cherish sharing this moment with his first national championship team as a head coach albeit briefly because he doesn’t want college football’s perfect story to end just yet.

“Chapter 3 begins tomorrow,” he shouted.

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Michael Marot, The Associated Press

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