MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (WDRB) — Indiana had been the bully of the College Football Playoff.
It manhandled Alabama. It broke Oregon. It made national powerhouses look like opening acts in the Hoosier Homecoming Tour.
But to win it all — to finish this Hollywood script with a crimson flourish — the bully had to bleed.
Miami came with a plan and a purpose: hit Fernando Mendoza, hit him again, and keep hitting him until the dream cracked.
It never cracked.
Indiana beat Miami 27–21 to achieve college football immortality — a 16–0 perfect season, the first national title in program history, and the culmination of a playoff run that saw the Hoosiers outscore Alabama, Oregon and Miami by a combined 104–62.
A transformation from Midwest ghost story to headline act under a tropical sky.
They took Miami’s best punches. And kept getting up.
Mendoza’s lip was bloodied. His pocket was collapsed like a lawn chair in a hurricane. Miami gave him just enough time to decide which kind of pain he preferred.
And still, Mendoza found a way.
Late in the fourth quarter, with Indiana clinging to a sliver of control, he took off on fourth down and ran straight into legend — up the gut, shedding tacklers, sidestepping ghosts, diving headlong into the end zone. Into history.
The quarterback who spent the season mastering the delicate art of precision now won the biggest game of his life with pure guts.
Indiana is your national champion. A program that once played home games in anonymity and November games in irrelevance just completed a season for the ages.
And Mendoza — bloodied, brilliant, and almost biblical in his resolve — is the reason why.
But not the only reason.
This epic tale was authored by a head coach, Curt Cignetti, whose arrival in Bloomington has flipped the laws of physics. “It can be done,” he told ESPN. And then he did it.
“It took a lot to get here,” Cignetti said, “but what it took to come out ahead in this game was a lot of guts.”
He brought them by the busload.
Charlie Becker was one of them.
He didn’t catch the winning touchdown. He just caught all the ones that made it possible.
One came on a back-shoulder prayer — off-balance, off-script, and just barely in bounds — that set up Mendoza’s Superman dive. Another came on fourth down, with Miami blitzing the house and trying to rip the ball back for one last swing.
Becker caught it anyway. Covered. Twisting. Falling. Nails in the coffin.
And with under two minutes to go, the defense needed one more exclamation point. Up by a touchdown, with Carson Beck driving Miami down the field, Indiana needed a closer.
Enter Jamari Sharpe. One-on-one. Deep ball. Interception. Curtain.
He took a knee at the five-yard line. And Indiana took the crown.
The confetti rained. Curt Cignetti’s mouth twitched upward. The bravado, the boldness, the belief — all of it had delivered the unthinkable. Indiana, of all places, on the mountaintop.
For the Hoosiers, this game was like pulling teeth with a Louisville Slugger.
Mendoza was pressured on six of his 17 first-half drop-backs — the same number he faced in both previous playoff games combined. He had an average of 2.1 seconds to throw. And by the end of Indiana’s first second-half drive, he’d been sacked three times.
Still, Indiana led 10–0 at halftime — because Miami, for all its defensive venom, couldn’t stop the run.
Indiana reached the red zone first and hit a field goal. Then came an 85-yard drive, finished by tight end Riley Nowakowski barreling in from the one.
Miami hit a doinked field goal off the upright at the end of the half. Indiana jogged to the locker room, up 10–0, looking like the tougher team.
But trouble was brewing.
To open the second half, the Hoosiers stalled. Miami roared. Even after Indiana got a fresh set of downs via a face mask penalty, the drive flatlined. Mendoza was sacked twice.
Then Miami struck. Two plays. Fifty-seven yards. Mark Fletcher galloping like, made it 10–7, the longest run of his career.
Game pressure? It had arrived.
But among the many traits of this Indiana team — toughness, defense, the kind of run game you write country songs about — one often gets overlooked.
Special teams. Or, as Cignetti calls them, just “teams.” Might want to start adding the “special” back in.
Miami punted late in the third. Mikail Kamara got a hand on it. Isaiah Jones recovered it in the end zone. And just like that, Indiana was back up 10.
Miami outgained Indiana 150–11 in the third quarter. Didn’t matter. Indiana still held the lead.
Fletcher scored again early in the fourth to cut it to 17–14.
Then came Indiana’s biggest drive of the night. Twelve plays. Seventy-five yards. Mendoza ran the last 12 himself — a scramble that should be bronzed — and made it 24–14. He eluded some defenders, ran through others, and finished with a dive to break the plane.
At that point, you could start to feel it, if you were an Indiana fans, and Hard Rock Stadium was filled with them, home-field advantage for Miami and all.
But even that wasn’t enough.
Carson Beck engineered a Miami drive like it was drawn in the sand. Quick completions. A 22-yard burst from Malachi Toney. Suddenly it was 24–21.
Still 6:37 left.
Then, one more Charlie Becker catch. One more field goal. One last stand.
That’s how Indiana finished — not untouched, but unshaken. Not flawless, but undefeated. Not a fluke, but a force.
Its run game powered the offense most of the night. Indiana rushed 45 times for 131 yards, with Kaelon Black (17 carries, 79 yards) and Roman Hemby (19 carries, 60 yards) grinding out gains even when Miami’s front clamped down.
And Mendoza finished his season with 3,850 passing yards, 38 total touchdowns, zero playoff turnovers, and a legacy that now includes leading Indiana to a perfect season.
And one, last, indelible moment for a team that simply refused to blink.
A program that once dreamed of bowl bids now owns the sport’s biggest trophy.
And a quarterback who could organize molecules with his mind just used his legs to carry a team into legend.
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