Indiana completes undefeated season
and wins first national title, beating Miami 27-21 in CFP final
[January 20, 2026]
By EDDIE PELLS
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Fernando Mendoza lowered his pads into a
defender, spun in a full circle, used his hand to keep his balance,
then launched himself horizontally and reached the ball over the
goal line — an Indiana touchdown and a ready-made poster pic for a
title run straight from the movies.
Maybe they’ll call it “Hoosiers.”
The Heisman Trophy winner’s touchdown Monday night put an
exclamation point on a 27-21 win over Miami that closed out an
undefeated season and brought an improbable — maybe impossible? —
national championship to a program that had known nothing but losing
and indifference for almost 140 years.
“Let me tell you: We won the national championship at Indiana
University. It can be done,” said coach Curt Cignetti, who took over
a program with a nation-leading 713 losses and turned it into the
game's biggest winner in the span of two years.
Cignetti, the 64-year-old coaching lifer, started it. Mendoza helped
get the Hoosiers over the line. He finished with 186 yards passing,
but it was that tackle-breaking, sprawled-out 12-yard touchdown run
on fourth-and-4 with 9:18 left that defined this game — and the
Hoosiers' season.
Indiana would not be denied.
“I had to go airborne,” said Mendoza, who had his lip split and his
arm bloodied by a ferocious Miami defense that sacked him three
times and hit him many more. “I would die for my team.”
Mendoza's TD gave Indiana a 24-14 lead — barely enough breathing
room to hold off a frenzied charge by the hard-hitting Hurricanes —
a team that barely made the College Football Playoff and barely
showed up in the first half of the final before coming to life
behind 112 yards and two scores from Mark Fletcher.
“They're the best thing that happened to the University of Miami in
25 years,” said coach Mario Cristobal, who was part of the title run
that put this colorful program on the map in the 1980s and '90s.
The CFP trophy now heads to the most unlikely of places:
Bloomington, Indiana — home of the college that famously boasts the
most living alumni (805,000), including billionaire Mark Cuban and
several thousand of his closest friends who packed Miami's home
stadium and turned a title-game ticket into a $4,000-or-more
splurge.
“It's way up there, that's for damn sure,” Cuban said when asked
where this ranked among the out-of-nowhere success stories he helped
bankroll on his reality show “Shark Tank.”
Indiana finished 16-0 — using the extra games afforded by the
expanded 12-team playoff to match a perfect-season win total last
compiled by Yale in 1894. President Donald Trump was in the stands
for what he said “turned out to be a great game” after a slow start
— Indiana led 10-0 at half.
In a fitting bit of symmetry, this undefeated title comes 50 years
after Bob Knight’s basketball team went 32-0 to win it all in that
state’s favorite sport.
That hasn’t happened since, and there’s already some thought that
college football — in its evolving, money-soaked,
name-image-likeness era — might not see a team like this again,
either.
Players like Mendoza — a transfer from Cal who grew up just a few
miles away from Miami’s campus, “The U” — certainly don’t come
around often.
Two fourth-down gambles by Cignetti in the fourth quarter, after
Fletcher’s second touchdown carved the Hurricanes' deficit to three,
put the QB in position to shine.
The first was a 19-yard-completion to Charlie Becker on a
back-shoulder fade those guys have been perfecting all season. Four
plays later came a decision and play that wins championships.
[to top of second column] |
Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza holds the trophy after their
win against Miami in the College Football Playoff national
championship game, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP
Photo/Marta Lavandier)
Cignetti sent his kicker out on fourth-and-4 from
the 12, but quickly called his second timeout. The team huddled on
the field and the coach drew up a quarterback draw, hoping the
Hurricanes would be in a defense they had shown before.
“We rolled the dice and said, ‘They’re going to be in it again and
they were,’” Cignetti said. “We blocked it well, he broke a tackle
or two and got in the end zone.”
Mendoza's play could very well join John Elway's “helicopter” run in
Super Bowl 32 as one of the greatest examples of a quarterback
willing to put everything on the line to win it all. Mendoza might
soon have something else in common with Elway: This game did little
to diminish his projection as the first pick in the upcoming NFL
draft.
“Everyone on the team, including my coach, makes fun of my running
style,” Mendoza said. “But it’s fourth down, so you’ve got to put it
all on the line. Every player, if they had that opportunity, they’d
put their body on the line, too.”
For Miami, it was a very close call.
A team listed 18th in the first CFP rankings moved to 10th and
sneaked into the playoff, bringing as many questions about the
process as the selection itself.
The Hurricanes proved they belonged all the way. Fletcher was a
one-man force, hitting triple digits for the third time in four
playoff games and turning a moribund offense into something much
more.
His first touchdown run was a 57-yard burst through the right side
that pulled Miami within 10-7 early in the third quarter.
But after forcing an Indiana punt deep into Miami territory,
Hoosiers lineman Mikail Kamara slid past the ’Canes’ protectors and
blocked the kick. Isaiah Jones recovered to make it 17-7. Miami was
in comeback mode the rest of the way.
It ended as a one-score game, and the ’Canes — the visiting team
playing on their home field — moved into Indiana territory before
Carson Beck’s heave got picked off by Jamari Sharpe, a Miami native
who made sure the only miracle in this season would be Indiana’s.
How big a miracle?
This was a program that was so bad that coach Lee Corso stopped a
game in 1976 to take a picture of a scoreboard when it read “Indiana
7, Ohio State 6.” Indiana lost 47-7.
There were hundreds of losses in front of half-empty stadiums
between then and now.
But those days are over. The Hoosiers — yes, the Hoosiers — are
national champions.
“I know nobody thought it was possible,” Cignetti said. “It probably
is one of the greatest sports stories of all time.”
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
