Every Hickory Huskers team was without a football team.
Hoosiers was built on Indiana’s respect for basketball. Football? Consider Indiana University, where sports are rarely a job. Something to pass the time until the first signal.
Not anymore. Certainly not on Monday night.
A simple coach named Kurt Cignetti joins the football party by knocking on the door, and now see what happens. If the Hoosiers beat Miami on Monday night, IU can claim the last undefeated men’s basketball and soccer national championships. Both at the same dizzying moment in history. No one could say that before. The only other school with both perfect championships is UCLA, the Bruins of spotless football 72 years ago.
NOTES: Indiana swept Oregon in the CFP semifinals at the Peach Bowl.
Until recently, Indiana sports were rarely mentioned in the same sentence, and usually unnecessary. They come in and out every November, passing aircraft carriers and tugboats. But everything changed. “It’s been surreal,” Cignetti said this week as the Hoosiers prepare for the College Football Playoff title game.
Indeed. “We’re not playing their football team, thank God,” Tom Izzo said while watching Michigan State play Indiana in basketball the other day. Those words have probably never been uttered by a basketball coach in the history of the Big Ten. Izzo’s Spartans won by 21 points without worrying about Fernando Mendoza’s passing game. IU basketball is now 12-5, but 5-5 in its last 10 games, and will need a strong second half to avoid the NCAA Tournament bubble. At the same time, the football team is the toast of sports.
The universe has changed in Bloomington. Look at the sea that used to separate the two programs.
So far this year, Indiana has won five national championships in basketball and only three in football.
Indiana has won 22 basketball titles. It was the third in football.
The basketball team reached six finals in 30 years from 1973 to 2002. The football team had six winning seasons.
In 1940, when Indiana won the NCAA Tournament basketball title, the football Hoosiers went 3-5 and scored 69 points all season.
Indiana’s second championship came in 1953. The Hoosiers were 2-7 in football and closed out the season with a 30-0 loss to Purdue.
Indiana’s perfect basketball season in 1976 saw Bob Knight win its first championship. Football’s 1976 Hoosiers went 5-6 and were outscored 105-7 in three games against Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State.
Knight won his second title in 1981. Football record is 3-8, three wins by a total of five points.
His last championship was in 1987. Football was in the midst of a revival with Bill Mallory at the time and was 8-4.
Indiana’s last playoff appearance was in 2002. The football team is 3-9 in the parking lot and 1-7 in the Big Ten.
That’s it. The basketball program earned lifetime membership in the Blue Bloods Club, while the football Hoosiers have not won a bowl in 33 years. Knight had five different football coaches during his basketball career.
BACK: Mendoza and Miami Hurricanes clash at home for CFP title
The basketball team has been ranked in the top 10 by the Associated Press for 43 seasons. This year is the sixth time he is playing football.
The IU basketball team started the season with an all-time winning percentage of .633. A football team would have to win another 773 games to catch that streak.
But in 2026, the world is a very different place. The Hoosiers may be the kings of the football world, and a basketball team hasn’t been able to say that for 39 years. They can be as perfect as the 1976 ring of immortality Hoosiers.
(Weird note: Both teams should have beaten Alabama in the postseason. The Tide had a 74-69 rout of Indiana in the NCAA Tournament and Sweet 16 in ’76. For the football players – 38-3 in Tuscaloosa already trying to forget).
They’re even naming storm ponds in Bloomington after Indiana football players now. After D’Angelo Ponds, who opened the Oregon Bash with six points last week, it will be D’Angelo’s Pond for a while. “A well-designed stormwater pond is like a bay, knowing how to build and protect it,” the city said in a press release. Never before have basketball champions like Steve Alford Creek and Isaiah Thomas Lake had anything like it.
It’s Monday morning and we’ve got a week left to play, so do yourself a favor and listen to Don Fisher’s call to stop D’Angelo Pond for the 50th time.
pic.twitter.com/6G6baFUOmJ— Martha the Mop Lady (@TheMopLady) January 12, 2026
They could become the first college football team since Yale to go 16-0. It was 1894. In 1940, Indiana’s first national basketball champions won just four of those.
The moment of truth is Monday night against Miami at Hard Rock Stadium. Back in Bloomington, Indiana, Simon Skjodt’s auditorium is opening for a watch party. Concessions, rally towels, the whole package. With five state titles hanging at one end and statues of past champions in the lobby, crowds will pour into the famous basketball arena to drive a 15-0 football program crazy like never before on such a stage. During the 1980s, a program that went 24-143-5 all-time against Michigan State and Ohio State needed five seasons to win 15 games. Now he might meet the statues.
“It’s going to be a scary movie,” Cignetti suggested the other day. Funnel with shoulder pads.
As the man said, surreal.
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