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Late in my senior year of high school, I walked into a Kroger wearing an IU hoodie. On the way in, an elderly man, presumably an alumnus, stopped me to jokingly ask if I thought we would make the playoffs this year. It threw me off for two reasons. For one, I didn’t know him and didn't expect a spontaneous sports question. Secondly, I had not given any thought to IU’s football team.
Looking back, I finally get the joke because there was no realistic chance we would ever make the playoffs, potentially ever. I think I can speak for many of my peers when I say that football was not high on the list of reasons I considered IU as an incoming freshman. Just two years ago, I attended the Oaken Bucket game with my fiancé, watching the two worst teams in the Big Ten, and we still lost!
Since then, much has changed.
This past year, we witnessed the program's first 10-0 season, its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance and a new single-season home attendance record. The Hoosiers also set a record for the most single-game points and total yards (701) in their 77-3 victory against Western Illinois. By the end of the season, the team had finished with eight home wins, the most in program history.
Oh, and not for nothing, the Hoosiers secured the program's largest-ever margin of victory against rival Purdue with a 66-0 win.
This is too good of a turnaround to let it go by without a sentimental teaching moment, so let’s get into some lessons to be learned from the comeback.
First, the right people make the difference. At the start of the season, 27 players transferred from James Madison University with Cignetti to join Indiana’s line-up, as well as seven assistant coaches. That's a big change. The transfers who came from Cignetti’s final three teams at JMU are now 41–6 in college, but that wasn’t always the story. According to one article from Sports Illustrated, elite college football programs considered several of the transfers "too small" or "too slow," resulting in these players being largely ignored by recruiting programs. Thanks to a second chance, their stats tell a much different story.
Now, these players are some of the most experienced winners in the conference.
After a record-smashing first season with the Hoosiers, these players proved that success often comes from overlooked potential and effective leadership. Cignetti's ability to identify and develop talent has transformed Indiana into a competitive force, rewriting expectations and setting new benchmarks for the program. Under Cignetti’s leadership, these players have flourished.
Secondly, great leadership commands success. After arguably one of the biggest turnarounds in college football, Cignetti was named Big Ten Coach of the Year. What’s amazing is this isn't even the first time he’s won an honor of this caliber. This marks the fourth time in his career that he earned coach of the year accolades from the conference level in every conference he’s coached in.
A person doesn't consistently receive those kinds of awards for mediocrity; great leadership makes a difference. Cignetti didn’t just inherit a struggling program; he reshaped its culture. He instilled confidence, demanded excellence and built a team identity centered on discipline and resilience. The players bought in, and the results speak for themselves: historic wins, national recognition and a fan-base that’s more energized than ever.
IU football’s last season was much more than a heart-warming “yay-we-aren’t bad-anymore” sports story. It’s a powerful statement about real transformation. Perhaps the real takeaway is that leadership begins with the willingness to step up and take responsibility for what you can control. None of us can rewrite the past, but we can decide how we’ll move forward from it.
Circumstances, setbacks and even failures don’t have to be permanent markers of who we are or what we’re capable of becoming. The story of IU football shows that even after seasons of disappointment, there is always room for renewal. A comeback is never out of reach, and when it does arrive, it often carries with it a strength and resilience that would not have been possible without the struggle that came before.
Ainsley Foster (she/her) is a senior studying elementary education.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of Indiana football's home wins during the 2025 season.
