{"id":123358,"date":"2026-01-19T02:51:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T02:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/123358\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T02:51:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T02:51:40","slug":"miami-meets-indiana-for-a-title-in-a-matchup-nobody-saw-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/123358\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami meets Indiana for a title in a matchup nobody saw coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) \u2014 One program long lived with the distinction of losing more games<\/a> in the history of college football than anyone. The other has enjoyed its fair share of glory<\/a> and contempt \u2014 albeit all of it old enough to be packaged in grainy documentaries, or retold among the tall tales of an era long gone by.<\/p>\n

Indiana and Miami are playing for the national title<\/a> Monday night, and if that has you scratching your head thinking \u201cWho?\u201d or \u201cWhat?\u201d then you are not alone.<\/p>\n

Even though a new world of paying players and rapid-fire transfers<\/a> from school to school has shuffled the deck in college sports<\/a>, nobody thought it would get mixed up this much. And even though both schools have been trending upward of late, both were listed as 100-1 long shots to win the championship at some point this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got here,\u201d explained Indiana\u2019s second-year coach and turnaround artist Curt Cignetti, \u201cI was trying to figure out if the fan base was dead or just on life support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who could blame them?<\/p>\n

Before Cignetti\u2019s arrival to start the 2024 season, the Hoosiers had compiled 713 losses over 130-plus years of football. For some, buying seats for football was a wallet-squeezing requirement to gain access to tickets for the basketball games coached by Bob Knight and a string of successors \u2014 a much better team and better draw.<\/p>\n

Cignetti, whose resume looks like a Delta Airlines departures board, arrived with virtually zero fanfare, at least on a national level.<\/p>\n

Asked different versions of the same question time and again at a signing-day news conference in his first season that surprised many for how good it was, Cignetti landed the punch that will end up on his tombstone: \u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple. I win. Google me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one way, the Indiana resurgence is a product of the new era of college football, in which players get paid and move freely between schools. Cignetti started this resurgence by bringing 13 players with him from his former job, at James Madison.<\/p>\n

In another way, this is about a coach commandeering a program and rebuilding it the old-fashioned way.<\/p>\n

Quarterback Fernando Mendoza moved from Cal to Indiana last year because \u201cI felt like Coach Cignetti could help me get to where it thought I could be as a quarterback.\u201d A two-star recruit out of high school, he won the Heisman Trophy this season. The Hoosiers, who call themselves the \u201cmisfits,\u201d have, at most, two four-star recruits on their roster.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never looked at a star in my life,\u201d Cignetti said of the imprecise ranking system that means nothing until those players put on pads. \u201cIf a guy can play hard and has the right stuff and the intangibles, we can work with him and he\u2019ll develop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indiana does claim the world\u2019s largest living alumni base<\/a>, several thousand of whom are gobbling up what\u2019s turning out to be potentially the toughest ticket ever<\/a> for a title game that will, ironically, be played on Miami\u2019s home field<\/a>. They also have Mark Cuban, who has added multiple millions to the effort. Indiana\u2019s football budget has grown from $24 million to $61 million since 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a village and there\u2019s money,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not all about money.\u201d <\/p>\n

Same story, different blueprint at Miami<\/p>\n

To some extent, Miami would agree with that.<\/p>\n

This is a program with deep, colorful roots. The 2018 ESPN documentary about the Notre Dame-Miami rivalry is called \u201cCatholics vs. Convicts.\u201d Notre Dame is the Catholic school.<\/p>\n

Names from the \u201880s and \u201990s \u2014 Michael Irvin, Jimmy Johnson, Bernie Kosar and infamous booster Nevin Shapiro<\/a> \u2014 faded away to be replaced by essentially nothing.<\/p>\n

Not until a product of that \u201880s and \u201990s heyday, Mario Cristobal, arrived in 2021<\/a> did things start looking up again for the \u2018Canes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we were a group of guys who nobody believed in who changed history by playing with unbelievable effort,\u201d Cristobal said of his old teams. \u201cIt was a little wild, a little edgy, but no one could question the brotherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Indiana, the \u2018Canes are a product of the new name-image-likeness era in college football, combined with some tough love from a coach who was around long before that started.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely zero,\u201d Cristobal said when asked what he changed as a coach once the dollars started flowing and the players started moving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have to change the way you coach because you\u2019re afraid of the portal<\/a>, you\u2019re not doing it right to begin with,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to push people, be demanding but not demeaning, don\u2019t compromise. I don\u2019t believe that has to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest portal stories involving Miami are about players who came, not left.<\/p>\n

A year ago, in two episodes that felt revolutionary at the time but are now more like business as usual, quarterback Carson Beck<\/a> and defensive back Xavier Lucas left their old schools for Miami. <\/p>\n

Beck raised eyebrows because he was leaving Georgia \u2014 a perennial contender \u2014 to play a fifth season at a school that hadn\u2019t sniffed a title in decades. The reported $4 million in NIL probably helped.<\/p>\n

Lucas became a litmus test of sorts when his old school, Wisconsin, sued Miami<\/a>, alleging Cristobal\u2019s staff induced the freshman into breaching his NIL contract with the Badgers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t pay attention to any of it,\u201d said Lucas, who grew up in nearby Pompano Beach. \u201cI just wanted to come back and help the fellas win.\u201d<\/p>\n

If this matchup from out of nowhere proves anything, it might be that in a new, more-expensive era of college football, anyone can win.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndiana is showing that if you have no history or tradition, you can still catch up to the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world,\u201d said Chris Fowler, who will call the game for ESPN and agreed it is the most unexpected title-game matchup he\u2019s been a part of. \u201cCignetti just showed you how.\u201d<\/p>\n

As did Cristobal at Miami.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no excuses anymore,\u201d Fowler said. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) \u2014 One program long lived with the distinction of losing more games in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61360,57613,54220,111,143,53637,11450,1882,28,57,477,28625,3156,26760,53474,7122,61359,123,125,124,21685,4348,110,1110],"class_list":["post-123358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-bernie-kosar","tag-bob-knight","tag-chris-fowler","tag-college-sports","tag-college-football","tag-curt-cignetti","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-football","tag-general-news","tag-in-state-wire","tag-indiana","tag-james-madison","tag-jimmy-johnson","tag-mario-cristobal","tag-mark-cuban","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-michael-irvin","tag-schools","tag-sports","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}