They called it the graveyard of Saturdays,
a place where dreams went to die
in the cold wind of Bloomington—
decades of mediocrity, of never-evers,
of echoes swallowed by empty bleachers.
Then came Cignetti,
not with fireworks, but with FIRE.
A man of blueprint and bluntness,
who saw not what was, but what could be.
He spoke of belief,
not the kind you whisper in the locker room,
but the kind that shouts down old tales of doom.
He gathered the castoffs,
the overlooked, the doubted,
and forged them into steel:
Mendoza, the calm in the storm;
Sarratt and Cooper's sticky hands;
Fisher hoisting the Old Oaken Bucket
like it was Excalibur.
They marched through titans:
Ohio State by inches,
Alabama by tidal,
Oregon by de-Duck-tion.
And then, under the Miami lights,
with 67,000 hearts pounding,
they stood unshaken.
Black, Hemby pounding forward
Kamara’s swatting block
Becker’s circus catch
HeisMendoza’s flying leap
TEAMWORK and GUTS on full display.
A pick in the fourth,
a kneel in the red zone,
and history cracked open like thunder.
Indiana—champions.
Hoosier Nation proud
not just hardwood and hoops,
but in the game of gridiron giants.
Cignetti didn’t smile.
He didn’t need to.
The scoreboard did it for him.
16-0.
A new gospel written in Cream and Crimson.
Ken Koziol is a writer and editor, East Asian studies scholar (EALC) and former Communication and Program Manager, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, UC Berkeley. Other writings found at kensview.com.
