The Big Picture: Wrecking Ball Indiana Looks Unstoppable Ahead of CFP Title Game

Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta) — It’s enough already. 

It’s enough calling Indiana "college football’s Cinderella." It's enough cooing at the Hoosiers' success like we’re looking at newborn baby babble. 

It's enough wondering aloud if Indiana — the No. 1-ranked team in the country and the only undefeated squad standing — is simply better than everybody else in every phase of the game.

This Indiana team, second-year coach Curt Cignetti's Indiana team, is a wrecking ball. It is better. 

Who else but a Titan could out-score No. 9 Alabama and then No. 5 Oregon by a combined score of 94-25?

There are still firsts for this program: a Prometheus emerging from the cliffs to once again bring us mere mortals fire. The Hoosiers can become the first first-time national champion in the sport since Florida in 1996. That Gators team finished 12-1. 

That's how it felt late Friday night at the Peach Bowl inside the stadium that was mostly filled with red, whether you liked it or not. Indiana fans have longed for this and showed up with such a formidable presence, you might have thought the game was in Bloomington.

The 1996 Hoosiers finished 3-8 with just one win against a Power 4 team (Purdue), which, for 139 years, had been the standard for Indiana — a university with a football program so bad that it helped popularize the phrase "basketball school."

Not then, and, frankly, not even to start 2025, did many believe the Hoosiers would ever compete in the national championship game. After obliterating No. 5 Oregon 56-22 in Friday's College Football Playoff semifinal at the Peach Bowl to reach 15-0, that's exactly what they're going to do against No. 10 Miami in the CFP national championship game on Jan. 19 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

At the post-game press conference in the bowels of a stadium that has seen its share of champions since it was erected in October 2017, I reminded Indiana coach Curt Cignetti that oddsmakers handed the Hoosiers 100-to-1 odds to win the national title this season. 

Then I asked him what Indiana's odds should be with one game left to play. His face registered a moment of irritation before thoughtfully answering.

"Well," he said, "you all have a job to do, and a lot of times you'll piggyback off somebody else's story or belief. And there's pressure to get it nowadays with the internet, get the story out there. And a lot of those people really don't know our team. They don't know what we're made of, what we got, and I get it. 

"There was a lot of skepticism after last year that we were a fluke. That team did a lot of great things and got it all started. … We’ve just built off our successes, and we've won some big games on the road, and it helps when you have a quarterback play his best football when the game's online in the fourth quarter. And so here we are."

While they're here, they're not just winning. They're laying teams out on the rack, tying them up and stretching them out.

[2025 CFP Title Odds: Indiana Favored Over Miami in National Championship]

That win against Oregon is Indiana’s seventh scoring 55 or more points and 15th straight this season giving up no more than 24. The Hoosiers now have two of the six largest wins in CFP history and could become the first team since Yale in 1894 to finish a season 16-0, according to FOX Sports Research.

"They do a lot, and they do it really, really well," Ducks coach Dan Lanning said in his post-game press conference. "There’s not a weakness in their game. They run the ball well, they stop the run well, they throw the ball well, they defend the pass well, they've been good on special teams. They obviously have a ton of belief, and deservedly so. They’re really good."

I realize Miami hasn't allowed an opponent to score more than 27 points this season, and they relish squeezing life from their opponents like a boa constrictor.

But if Miami is to prevent Indiana becoming the first first-time national champion in 30 years, it better win the second quarter, or it will be the team that is the final "L" on the first 16-0 season since 19th century college football.

Beware, Miami. I see fire rising.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him @RJ_Young.

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