MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Anthony Thompson stood near the tunnel peeking through a pack of reporters with their cameras and iPhones.
Thompson – the running back who finished second in the 1989 Heisman Trophy race behind Houston's Andre Ware – is the original Indiana football icon. In this moment he was just like everybody else.
He wanted to watch Indiana coach Curt Cignetti lead the Hoosiers out for the 2026 College Football Playoff championship game at Hard Rock Stadium. Thompson – who once rushed for a school-record 377 yards against Wisconsin on Nov. 11, 1989 – clapped his hands.
"I just want somebody to pinch me and wake me up," Thompson told AllSportsPeople. "This is a dream come true. I can't believe it. Hoosier Nation is here. We deserve it."
No. 1 Indiana owned that stage with a 27-21 victory against No. 10 Miami on Monday. The accomplishment is one of the greatest moments in college football history and has been compared to the movie "Hoosiers" with Cignetti taking on the role of Norman Dale.
BENDER: Fernando Mendoza, Curt Cignetti complete CFB's greatest story ever told
That is understating the impact it has on college football in the future. For college basketball, March turned into Madness when Michigan State's Magic Johnson and Indiana State's Larry Bird squared off in the 1979 NCAA men's basketball championship. It drew an audience of 40 million and remains the most-watched national championship game in college basketball history.
This isn't about ratings. Mark Cuban – an Indiana alum and multi-million dollar businessman – used another metric.
"Indiana is a great underdog story, and the ticket prices reflect that," Cuban told SN. "Last year, Indiana did not pull in great numbers. This year, it is through the roof."
This is the first time in college football where it feels like anybody can win the national championship. That is by no means a knock on Indiana – like Thompson said they deserved everything after the first 16-0 season in college football season. It validated the appeal of the 12-team College Football Playoff.
"I think we sent a message," Cignetti said in the post-game press conference. "First of all, to society. If you keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard and you've got the right people, anything's possible. In our particular situation in the athletic world, college football has changed quite a bit. The balance of power."
How did Cignetti pull this off in a college football era that is pure Madness off the field with NIL, the transfer portal, super conferences and an expanded tournament? That's exactly what it is, now, a tournament.
That answer is deeper than you think.
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Curt Cignetti learned to win through losing
Cignetti will be asked to re-tell the story about "Google me" at his introductory press conference on Dec. 23, 2023 for the rest of his life.
What's one more? A reporter asked Cignetti if he envisioned being in the College Football Playoff championship game two years later, and the coach nearly shook his head with one of his trademark facial expressions before pulling out the recollection. He had done a halftime speech at Assembly Hall by calling out Purdue – then taking it a step further with Michigan and Ohio State – but there were still questions about whether anybody could win at Indiana.
"I was asked the same question for about the 14th time," Cignetti said at CFP Championship Media Day at the Miami Convention Center on Saturday. "I had a lot of confidence in myself and the staff because we had had success. That's why I took the job. But I can't say I ever thought this far ahead."
Yet the lessons weren't from winning. It was losing.
That originated from Cignetti's first job as a GA under Johnny Majors at Pitt in 1983-84. The Panthers finished with a 11-10-1 record through those two seasons, but Cignetti learned to adapt to the surroundings.
"When I was young, we took some potential guys," Cignetti said. "We had to. When I was with Coach Majors at Pitt, we didn't have much, didn't have facilities, didn't have money. We weren't very attractive to recruits. We took a lot of guys that had certain qualities but hadn't quite put it all together. So I learned from that."
From 1986-1999, Cignetti served as an assistant at Rice, Temple and Houston – a stretch where he was on a team with a winning record one time. That changed when he arrived at NC State in 2000. Then, he took a job under Nick Saban at Alabama in 2007. Cignetti was quick to point out a loss to Louisiana-Monroe in his first season, but the nature of his career changed.
Saban talked endlessly about "The Process" at his Alabama dynasty that lorded over college football through the end of the BCS era and four-team CFP era. There was never an aura of satisfaction, and Cignetti gives off the same vibe. Saban also is generally considered one of the greatest talent evaluators of all time. Cignetti learned about that as a receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. The evaluation worked its way up the body.
"Ankle stiffness, hip stiffness, knee stiffness, fatal flaws, start-stop game, generate explosion from those three facets of your lower body," Cignetti said he learned from Saban. "That would be the biggest thing. From a personal standpoint, I learn from my mistakes, and I think most of us that aspire to achieve at a high level either learn from our mistakes or we don't progress. To me, there's a lot to be said about what the guy is made of, his intangibles and his moldability or coachability, what kind of teammate he's going to be."
Cignetti was ready to be a Power 4 head coach. He compiled a 119-35 record between stops at IUP, Elon and James Madison. When Cignetti took the Indiana job, the Hoosiers were coming off a 3-9 season and had the worst all-time record of Power 4 programs.
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Curt Cignetti worked the transfer portal
NBC analyst Joshua Perry – who played linebacker at Ohio State and won a national championship in 2014 – watched the celebration unfold on the field at Hard Rock Stadium on Monday. Perry simply said, "This is crazy."
But when he breaks down the reasons why Cignetti's turnaround is possible, it makes more sense.
"I think it's kind of a two-fold thing," Perry said. "He had to identify guys – the ones that he brought over from JMU that were under the radar, had physical traits that he liked and had the right mental makeup."
The Hoosiers' starting lineup averaged 2.5 stars in recruiting rankings with 4.3 years of college experience. A total of 15 of those players were transfers. Running back Kaelon Black, receiver Elijah Sarratt, defensive tackle Tyrique Tucker, linebacker Aiden Fisher and cornerback D'Angelo Ponds were among the James Madison transfers.
"They always are in the right spot," Perry said. "They don't make a lot of mental errors, so I think whatever he does is he has found a way to identify that. Part of the reason you can have that success you can build those guys up through your program for multiple years. There is a benefit to being a veteran.
"He's developed them into a grown man playing the game," Perry said. "It has been very successful."
Indiana co-offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan said Cignetti has a process for that, too.
"Watching a recruit for him is like getting ready to play a game," Shanahan said. "You're not just going to watch the red zone one time. You're going to go back, you're going to watch it again and again, see if there's anything you can pick up on, and that's how I feel like his approach to recruiting as well, whether it's high school or portal."
Indiana and Cignetti turned out to be the perfect match. Cal transfer Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy and led the Hoosiers to the CFP championship with impeccable play through the College Football Playoff run. The Hoosiers were a complementary blend of elite offensive and defensive play, and they led the FBS with a +22 turnover margin, the last a game-sealing interception by Jamari Sharpe against the Hurricanes.
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Will other teams follow Curt Cignetti's model?
D'Angelo Ponds recalled when his father Angelo joked that maybe Indiana could make a bowl game in their first season in 2024 after his son transferred from James Madison.
"Coach Cignetti was like, ‘Bowl game?'" Ponds said with a laugh. "We're not going for a bowl game. That's something I laugh about all the time, knowing that guy's mindset and his belief in his system. I would say that's something that's always stuck out with me."
Cignetti took all those lessons from both sides of winning and losing and applied them in spectacular fashion at Indiana. Will other schools try to copycat the Indiana model?
"You see that in this year's hiring process, but there's a number of guys out there that kind of started out at D-II and worked their way to this position," Cignetti said. "My career path was certainly unusual, but I think it prepared me for this particular opportunity."
It's also still an everyday battle. The power-house programs such as Georgia, Texas and Ohio State will always have the advantages, and Cignetti said afterward Indiana's "NIL is nowhere near what people think it is." Yet Cignetti's post-game address sounded an awful lot like something Saban would say after one of his Alabama juggernauts won a national title.
"If you prepare the right way, which this team did week in, week out, and put it on the field, we met the challenge every single week, and we're 16-0," Cignetti said. "Are there eight first-round draft choices on this team? Probably not. No, there aren't. But this team, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts."
It's also about opportunity. That was not the case when Thompson played in the 1980s, when schools like Indiana had even less of a chance in their fight against the established bluebloods. The 12-team College Football Playoff has created that feeling.
"Seeing my former teammates – seeing the former coaches around here – everybody is truly excited," Thompson said. "These kids work hard, and they've earned the right to be here. Nobody gave it to them. They earned the right to be here."
Thompson was at Indiana basketball was at the top of the mountain under Bob Knight, winning its last national championship in the 1986-87 season. They could compete. Football could not. Now, the landscape has changed, and there will be other newcomers who challenge the established order. But the Hoosiers will always be the first.
"We're national champs," Cignetti said. "TCU had a great run a few years ago and fell short. I know Indiana's football history has been pretty poor with some good years sprinkled in there. It was because there wasn't an emphasis on football, plain and simple. Basketball school. Coach Knight had great teams. The emphasis is on football. It's on basketball, too. But you've got to be good in football nowadays."