College football's surprise: Miami and Indiana meet for a title in a matchup nobody saw coming

Even though a new world of paying players and rapid-fire transfers from school to school has shuffled the deck in college sports, 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.

“When I got here,” explained Indiana's second-year coach and turnaround artist Curt Cignetti, “I was trying to figure out if the fan base was dead or just on life support.”

Who could blame them?

Before Cignetti's 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 — a much better team and better draw.

Cignetti, whose resume looks like a Delta Airlines departures board, arrived with virtually zero fanfare, at least on a national level.

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: “It's pretty simple. I win. Google me.”

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.

In another way, this is about a coach commandeering a program and rebuilding it the old-fashioned way.

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

“I've never looked at a star in my life,” Cignetti said of the imprecise ranking system that means nothing until those players put on pads. “If a guy can play hard and has the right stuff and the intangibles, we can work with him and he'll develop."

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

“It takes a village and there's money," Cignetti said. “But it's not all about money.”

Same story, different blueprint at Miami

To some extent, Miami would agree with that.

This is a program with deep, colorful roots. The 2018 ESPN documentary about the Notre Dame-Miami rivalry is called “Catholics vs. Convicts.” Notre Dame is the Catholic school.

Names from the ‘80s and ’90s — Michael Irvin, Jimmy Johnson, Bernie Kosar and infamous booster Nevin Shapiro — faded away to be replaced by essentially nothing.

Not until a product of that ‘80s and ’90s heyday, Mario Cristobal, arrived in 2021 did things start looking up again for the 'Canes.

“I thought we were a group of guys who nobody believed in who changed history by playing with unbelievable effort,” Cristobal said of his old teams. “It was a little wild, a little edgy, but no one could question the brotherhood.”

Like Indiana, the 'Canes 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.

“Absolutely zero,” Cristobal said when asked what he changed as a coach once the dollars started flowing and the players started moving.

“If you have to change the way you coach because you're afraid of the portal, you're not doing it right to begin with,” he said. “You have to push people, be demanding but not demeaning, don't compromise. I don't believe that has to change.”

The biggest portal stories involving Miami are about players who came, not left.

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

Beck raised eyebrows because he was leaving Georgia — a perennial contender — to play a fifth season at a school that hadn't sniffed a title in decades. The reported $4 million in NIL probably helped.

Lucas became a litmus test of sorts when his old school, Wisconsin, sued Miami, alleging Cristobal's staff induced the freshman into breaching his NIL contract with the Badgers.

“I didn't pay attention to any of it,” said Lucas, who grew up in nearby Pompano Beach. “I just wanted to come back and help the fellas win.”

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.

“Indiana is showing that if you have no history or tradition, you can still catch up to the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world,” said Chris Fowler, who will call the game for ESPN and agreed it is the most unexpected title-game matchup he's been a part of. “Cignetti just showed you how."

As did Cristobal at Miami.

“There are no excuses anymore,” Fowler said.

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