Tony Barnhart
By Tony Barnhart
On Oct. 10, I was in College Station,Texas, doing some research for a book about the SEC. It was lunch time so I decided to sit at the bar of a local watering hole. The next day Texas A&M would host Florida at Kyle Field so everyone in the bar was dressed in their best Aggie gear.
Well, almost everyone.
Sitting next to me was a gentleman from Milwaukee who was dressed head to toe in the Crimson and Crème of Indiana University. So yeah, being a reporter for 50 years, I had to ask.
“Simple,” he said. “We’re going to be good again. In fact, we’re going to be BETTER than we were last season.”
Seriously?
That’s because I had already bought into the prevailing narrative that Indiana’s 11-2 record in 2024, the first 10-win season in school history, was a product of a less-than challenging Big Ten schedule. The Hoosiers were 5-0 at the time but the realities of college football, I thought, would catch up to Indiana over a long season.
Well, as we walked away from Hard Rock Stadium Monday night, a new set of realities was starting to sink in.
In Indiana’s 27-21 win over Miami, we witnessed nothing less than what Hoosier coach Curt Cignetti called “a Paradigm shift” in the way the game will be played now and into the future. Cignetti’s building job at Indiana took only two years with the savvy use of the transfer portal, exceptional coaching and a Heisman Trophy quarterback for the ages in Fernando Mendoza.
And there was the funding to back it all up. Indiana become the first Division I team in the modern era (since WW II) to go 16-0.
But here is the greatest thing we witnessed in Miami Gardens, Fla.
Indiana of 2025 has given all underdogs everywhere the priceless gift of Hope. Indiana University, once the losingest program in the history of
college football, has created the roadmap for those to dare to believe they, took, can someday win it all.
Here is the three-step program:
1 - Hire an elite coach. Not just a good coach, but an elite coach and give him the resources he needs—facilities, etc.
2 - Give him an NIL budget for player acquisition that is comparable to those at the leading powers. And this is important: spend whatever you have to spend to get a Top 10 quarterback.
3 - Hire a staff that knows how to use the transfer portal wisekt to build depth and fill holes in the roster. But finally, here is the lesson we take with us at the end of the 2025 college football season:
Depite all the problems that the game still has to solve—and there are many—the game on the field-- the one we see every Saturday - is the best it has ever been. And it is only going to get better.
The game is so good that the adults just can’t screw it up. A coach I talked to offered this when it comes to the future of a game we all a love.
“We’re never going back to the way it used to be. Those days are over."
“But what we’re doing now is simply not sustainable.”
“Ultimately the adults have to get together in a room and figure it out. We have a lot of smart people in college football.”
Yes we do.
See you in 2026.