CHAMPIONS!!!

The greatest come-from-nowhere story has been written, and it features the long-downtrodden Indiana Hoosiers, the most unlikely champs in the history of the game.

MY COUCH, Ind. – If this isn’t the greatest rags-to-riches story in American sports history, I dare you to show me something more outlandish, more unthinkable, more audacious. From perpetual Homecoming guests to national champions. From a .419 winning percentage from 1887-2023 (BC – Before Cignetti) to 16-0, the first undefeated team since the 1894 Yale Bulldogs. From worst to first, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye. From college football’s perpetual doormats to a perfect season.

Anything is possible.

The Indiana Hoosiers, 27-21 winners over Miami Monday in the national title game, are the embodiment of a team.

Look who the heroes were:

• Charlie Becker, the master of the contested ball, who was a special teamer before breaking out in stardom the latter half of the season after Elijah Sarratt was injured.

• Mikail Kamara, a no-star athlete and one of the JMU 13 who followed Curt Cignetti to Bloomington, emerging after an unimpressive season, and blocking a punt that resulted in a game-altering touchdown.

• Fernando Mendoza, a two-star from Miami who wanted desperately to walk on to his hometown team and was denied. He wasn’t great Monday – Miami’s relentless pass rush had a lot to do with that – but he was great when he absolutely had to be. His dive into the end zone for the winning score will end up on T-shirts all over the state, an iconic moment if ever there was one. Move over, Michael Penix’s dive to the pylon against Penn State. That was fun, but this was, well, downright inspiring. And it gave IU a 24-14 lead with 9:18 remaining, at which point, they hung on and sent Kirkwood Avenue’s denizens into hysterics, engaging in a primal scream that had been bottled up for more than a century.

“He ran a linebacker over,” Cignetti said later. “His will, he wasn’t going to be denied.”

Said Mendoza: “I would die for my guys.”

• And then there’s Cignetti, who pulled off the unimaginable, taking a 3-win team in Tom Allen’s last year, reaching the College Football Playoff his first year and then winning the Cig-natty in his second. It was less than 15 years ago that he was an underpaid, do-everything head coach at Indiana (Pa.), followed by reclamation projects at Elon and James Madison.

“When I was waxing staff tables at IUP when school was shut down, I never really thought this was possible,” Cignetti said. “But I just kept working and things happened and here we are.”

When it was over, Cignetti finally broke into a broad smile and gestured skyward toward the heavens, where his father, the late Frank Cignetti, Sr., was certainly watching.

“Then when the Big Ten Network asked me about him, I said, `Oh, you’re trying to get me all choked up, right?’ “ Cignetti said.

You’ve heard this all before, but it’s worth noting again: Alabama, Oregon and Miami have an abundance of four- and five-star recruits. Indiana has eight, all of them four-stars. Now they join the undefeated 1976 IU basketball team 50 years after Bob Knight’s team accomplished that feat. Yes, humble lil’ Indiana, the second-losingest program in college football, running through Alabama and Oregon before finally meeting their match in the national final game, out-lasting a violent (sometimes illegally violent) Miami team.

It almost doesn’t seem real.

It is, right? That actually happened, correct? I didn’t crash on the couch and dream this. Tell me, an IU alum, I didn’t just dream this.

“I didn’t think it was possible, I can’t lie,” Kamara said. “But to be here today, it’s just surreal.”

Cignetti spoke after the game, quickly disavowing people of the notion that IU suddenly found deep pockets and bought a national champion. The money is on the way – just waiting for the Mark Cuban check to clear – but it’s not like IU is rolling in the dough.

Yet.

“Our NIL is nowhere near what people think it is, so you can throw that out,” he said. “…But we’re 16-0, national champions at Indiana University, which I know a lot of people thought was never possible. It probably is one of the greatest sports stories of all time. But it’s all because of these guys and the staff. A great night.”

The Hoosiers won because they weren’t afraid of the moment, and because Cignetti was willing to put himself on the line with two fourth-down conversions on the game-winning drive. With fourth and four at the Miami 12-yard line with more than nine minutes remaining, he ran the field goal unit onto the field for a chip-shot try and a six-point lead, but then he called timeout, yanked the field goal team off the field and went for it on a daunting fourth-and-four.

“I didn’t feel really good about kicking a field goal there,” Cignetti said. “The play before they were in the coverage for the quarterback draw, which we put in specifically in the medium package in the low red (zone) against that look. We had to block a little different than we normally do, and that was about a 45-minute discussion in the staff room how we were going to call it and do it.

“…Let me tell you, Fernando, I know he’s great in interviews and comes off as the All-American guy, but he has the heart of a lion when it comes to competition. That guy competes like a warrior. He really got smacked a few times in this game…”

All he did, all his teammates did, was make the high-leverage plays that counted the most. Whether it was late against Iowa, late against Penn State, late against Ohio State, the Hoosiers made good things happen late against Miami, their steel will propeling them to this national championship.

How exciting was this? After the game, Mendoza stood on the victory podium with a microphone in his face, at which point the All-American boy dropped a big, healthy bleeping F-bomb.

“Sometimes I’ve had these cookie-cutter responses, media-trained responses – on to the next game, on to the next play – and now we did it,” Mendoza said later. “At that point, I think it was only fitting to open the floodgates per se, break my stereotype.”

Cignetti, sitting to Mendoza’s left in the post-game press conference, laughed.

“He’s been around Coach Cig too long,” he joked.

As Kevin Garnett once bellowed, “Anything is possible.” But it was outlandish to think IU – yes, IU – could pull off the most magical season in college football history. Of all the teams, all the programs, and IU (bleeping) did it. This doesn’t happen in Bloomington. Except it just did, and it did with a bunch of guys who weren’t supposed to be here and a coach who bet on himself at age 50, when he began his slow rise by coaching at Indiana (Pa.) in Division II.

“I think we sent a message to society that if you keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard and you’ve got the right people, anything’s possible,” Cignetti said. “…This team, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.”

He continued. “If I was smart, I’d probably retire; then I’d really be a story. But we need the money. What would I do? What would I do? I don’t know if I’ll have a beer in the teal chair. I had one after the game. That’s enough for me. We’ll be back at it. I love what I do. I love football. I’m a football guy.”

For the record, his beer of choice is (what else?) Hoosier beer from Upland Brewery in Bloomington.

“Absolutely the best beer I’ve ever had in my life,” Cignetti said. “And made me want to have another.”

He wasn’t the only one imbibing adult beverages Monday night.

Said linebacker Aiden Fisher, one of the JMU 13: “It’s just been an unbelievable journey. You take those 13 (JMU) guys, I don’t think any of them had great offers coming out of high school. We had a coach who took a chance on us once, and then the opportunity arose to do it again.”

It wasn’t just the players and coaches who were willing to pay the price Monday. Starting Sunday, IU fans started camping out on Kirkwood Ave. in sub-freezing temperatures to get a seat at one of the nearby bars. This team took the school, the city and (most of) the state on a wild ride, and damned if they were going to let a little frostbite get in the way of this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

“This is something you write a book about,” Kamara said. “You write a movie about it. To do this in real life and do it with these guys that I love, it’s just amazing.”

If movie makers Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh tried to sell this as a script to Hollywood, they would be laughed out of the room for presenting such an outlandish script.

I mean, the guy, Cignetti, comes in and talks all this crazy talk about reaching the Big Ten title game, about Purdue sucking (along with Michigan and Ohio State), saying thing like, “It’s simple. I win. Google me.”

And then he delivers. Immediately.

What seems like mythology is reality. Revel in it, Hoosier Nation. The dream – hell, it wasn’t even a dream; it was too ridiculous to be a dream – well, it happened. Now the fans in Bloomington can thaw out and get ready for a parade. Who’d have thought it was possible? Greatest come-from-nowhere story in American sports history. They did it, and all these hours later, I still can’t wrap my head around it. But I’ll try. I promise, I’ll try.