Here’s a phrase no one’s ever been able to factually use before: Indiana Hoosiers, college football national champions.
That’s not a typo; college football’s worst program – historically speaking – is now the sport’s best program, amassing a 27-2 record over the past two seasons and this year’s aforementioned CFP National Championship in the process. The Hoosiers’ success is the result of a remarkable turnaround that embodies everything we’ve always wanted to believe about college football (but that has never actually been true) – anybody can win it all.
But Indiana’s meteoric rise isn’t an underdog story. They were bad at football for more than 100 years because they chose to be, or, more accurately, their choices led them there. Uninspiring head-coaching hires, bare-minimum financial commitments and a lack of alignment between football and athletic leadership all conspired to keep Indiana football in the sport’s basement. In 2024, Indiana started hiring (and spending) like it wanted to win, and that’s exactly what happened.
Additionally, IU’s victory makes it three years in a row that a Big Ten school has claimed the big prize. Further south, things aren’t so sunny.
The 2026 CFP title game marked the third straight season without an SEC team invited, the longest such streak since 2000-02. Sure, five SEC teams earned berths to the 12-team playoff, but did you really see anyone other than Georgia as a credible threat to win it all? The SEC’s lone semifinalist, Ole Miss, put together a Cinderella run of their own that included winning a school-record 13 games while losing their head coach and half the coaching staff somewhere along the way. Was this a case of the Rebels catching lightning in a bottle or a sign of things to come? History says it’s the former.
Meanwhile, Alabama, the sport’s alpha dog, sleepwalked through its second season of the post-Nick-Saban era. While the Tide’s 20-8 record over the past two years would be cause for celebration in places like Starkville and Fayetteville, the sky is falling in Tuscaloosa, where back-to-back four-loss seasons happen about as often as your grandmother gets a new TV – once every 20 years. And if your grandma is a Bama fan, it’s likely she needs one after the Tide’s rotten-egg of a Rose Bowl.
The transfer portal has changed the calculus of college football. The key to winning isn’t necessarily developing talent over a period of years, it’s identifying talent for next year. In the case of Indiana, yesterday’s All-Sun Belt performer is today’s All-Big Ten honoree and national champion.
(Legally) paying players has changed things, too. Heck, you’d probably move to Bloomington or Eugene or Lubbock, too, if someone paid you more to do it. What used to be the domain of shady operators with stacks of cash and half-drunken old men handing out $100 handshakes is now standard operating procedure. About $15 million in revenue-share funds is the floor for a Power-4 roster, while third-party contributions and so-called “NIL” deals put the ceiling at, well, your guess is as good as mine, though reports have Ohio State, Texas and Texas Tech spending as much as $40 million on players in 2025. Athletic departments continue to hide behind FERPA protections and vague mentions of “competitive imbalance” in an effort to keep those numbers a secret.
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Most Mississippi State fans I know are of two minds as they reflect on the 2025 season, vacillating between “things couldn’t have gone much worse,” to “things went about the way they always do.” The Bulldogs spent competitively – definitely on coaching and likely on the roster – only to finish 5-8. Sound familiar? Ignoring bowl games, MSU’s cumulative winning percentage across 121 seasons is .487. In 2025, that number was .416. The more things change, right?
Philip Poe is The Dispatch’s sports editor.
Philip Poe is sports editor.
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