Indiana football won the national championship. Say that again, slowly, because for most of the sport’s history it would have been a joke. The Hoosiers beat Miami 27-21 on Monday night (Jan. 19) at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., to finish 16-0 and take the College Football Playoff title, the program’s first, per the AP.
The play that will be replayed is Fernando Mendoza’s. The Heisman Trophy winner lowered his pads into a defender, spun a full circle and launched himself horizontally, reaching the ball over the goal line for a 12-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-4 with 9:18 left that, per the AP, put Indiana up 24-14. His coach had called a timeout after sending the kicker out. He and the team huddled and drew up a quarterback draw, hoping Miami would be in a look they had shown before.
We rolled the dice and said, ‘They’re going to be in it again and they were.’
Curt Cignetti, AP, via TSN
Mendoza, who finished with 186 yards passing, had his lip split and his arm bloodied by a ferocious Miami defense. “I had to go airborne,” he said. “I would die for my team.” He added that his teammates, and his coach, make fun of his running style. “But it’s fourth down,” he said, “so you’ve got to put it all on the line.”
From 713 losses to 16-0
Curt Cignetti took over a program with a nation-leading 713 losses two years ago and has turned it, in the AP’s words, into the game’s biggest winner. The 64-year-old coach said after the win that “we won the national championship at Indiana University. It can be done.” The undefeated season matched a perfect-season win total last reached by Yale in 1894, using the extra games of the expanded 12-team playoff, and it arrived 50 years after Bob Knight’s Indiana basketball team went 32-0 to win it all, a feat nobody has repeated.
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Miami, the No. 10 seed playing at home, didn’t go quietly. Running back Mark Fletcher Jr. ran for 112 yards and two touchdowns, including a 57-yard burst that pulled the Hurricanes within 10-7, and Miami was within a score when Carson Beck’s final heave was intercepted. Miami coach Mario Cristobal said of his team, “They’re the best thing that happened to the University of Miami in 25 years.” NBC 6 Miami’s read: the Hurricanes’ wait for a title, last won in 2001, goes on.
What it means
The AP notes there is already some thought that college football, in its money-soaked era, may not see a team like this again. Mendoza, a Cal transfer who grew up a few miles from Miami’s campus, is projected as the first pick in the NFL draft. Mark Cuban, among Indiana’s most famous alumni, was among the thousands of Hoosiers fans who filled the stadium, and President Donald Trump also attended, calling it “a great game.”
The sports calendar rolls on, with the Winter Olympics opening on Feb. 6 and the NBA All-Star Game in Inglewood after it, but for now the story belongs to Bloomington.
- Final
- Indiana 27, Miami 21
- Record
- Indiana finished 16-0, its first national title
- MVP-level play
- Fernando Mendoza’s 12-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-4
- Venue
- Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens, Fla., Jan. 19, 2026
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
