Photo: USA Today
I read something long ago, along the lines of “sports fandom isn’t about shared joy; it’s mostly about shared suffering” - and I’ve never been able to get that out of my head.
Surrounding yourself with the fan bases of the final two teams standing as they prepare to face off in the National Championship (while you’re trying to enjoy a relaxing vacation in Miami) — can leave you bitter and vindictive.
It’s pretty obvious in 2025, Indiana University had the best collegiate football team in the country. Despite having less talent on paper than roughly 70 other teams (with an all time low % of players who were 4-5 star recruits coming out of high school) they became the first team in the modern era to win 16 games, lose none, and beat multiple top 10 teams on the road to the school’s first national title in history. Curt Cignetti told us “I win — google me”, then he literally went out and rattled off a 27-2 record and won a title in two years at one of the historically weakest programs of all-time. It’s one of the most incredible and unfathomable Cinderella stories in the history of sports; a script that would be deemed too cliche for a movie.
There is plenty of media discussing the game, framing Indiana’s incredible journey and turnaround in its proper history. Celebrating the incredible achievement and story for a new program at the mountain top.
This is not that.
I am tired of pretending this is all fine and good and special.
Indiana, and their fans specifically, do not deserve this happiness.
Dante — are you crazy? Indiana literally had more losses than any other program before this season. Shouldn’t that amount of losing mean celebrating that they won a national championship?
No. No, we should not be.
Indiana fundamentally broke the equation of sports fandom: a prolonged period of suffering, followed by an adversity filled journey, where they overcome battles and demons and rise to the top.
The goal is to go from the bottom to the top — eventually.
The team is really bad. They undergo some change, and slowly but surely turn their fortunes around and rise to the top, and finally achieve their championship dreams, battling adversity along the way and forging a legacy.
Fans, players, the community get to revel in the fruits of the journey. Pain, heartbreak making the joy and euphoria of victory all the sweeter.
Indiana skipped all that. They quite literally went from awful to complete juggernaut in the span of two years.
Before Curt Cignetti’s hiring in December 2023, Indiana football was college football’s ultimate doormat: the FBS program with the most all-time losses (717 by 2023), a .427 winning percentage overall (.365 in Big Ten play), only two conference titles (1945, 1967), seven final AP rankings in 125+ seasons, and a 3-9 bowl record with no postseason wins since 1991.
The 2000-2023 era was especially dire—102-172 record, just three winning seasons (peak 8-5 in 2019), multiple 0-win conference campaigns, a 28-game skid vs. ranked foes, and institutional neglect prioritizing basketball over football facilities/recruiting. Indiana football was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the worst programs in division one college football.
So Indiana was historically terrible - and now they’re GREAT. Don’t their fans deserve this after being awful for nearly a century?
No. No matter what any die hard fan will say, the hardest part of being a fan is not when your team is awful. It’s when your team is good — but not quite good enough.
When a team is legitimately terrible, it’s a chore to watch and wholly unenjoyable. However, it becomes much harder to get emotionally invested when said team is terrible.
You never allow yourself the possibility of dreaming because you know your team isn’t very good and is going to lose.
When your team is awful, you emotionally tune out on disappointment. You check out.
There have to be SOME life long Indiana fans, who watched every game and suffered decades of losing and deserve this? You’re telling me there aren’t fans of awful teams?
Sure, I am sure there is a very small cohort who were absolute die-hard Indiana football fans for decades before Curt Cignetti showed up and turned them into “Georgia North”. And I am happy for all 23 of those people.
Back to reality — it was frequently observed how much Indiana dominated attendance during the playoff run. Kudos to them — but their stadium was legitimately empty for Cignetti’s first game (apparently there were ~45,000 people there but see for yourself).
Photo: From X.com (twitter). Apparently this was during warm-ups. I don’t care.
The absurd ticket prices and travel to multiple playoff games goes down a little easier when you have had nearly a century to save.
Indiana fans do not deserve to be experiencing the joy of winning a national championship because they were able to somehow skip the most traumatic part of being a fan.
The shattering climb where your team endures repeated heartbreak and devastation before finally exorcising demons, conquering foes, and reaching the championship peak.
Ask a Buffalo Bills fan if it’s more painful now with crushing playoff loss after playoff loss — or when they were last place in the AFC East getting dunked on by Tom Brady. Seeing Josh Allen fail to exorcise his playoff demons year after year, either losing to Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, or Lamar Jackson; or turning the ball over in the most crucial moments. Failure to finally deliver the championship moment Buffalo fans have been wishing for.
If the Bills, and Allen, do ever overcome their playoff demons. It will have all been worth it, all the pain and suffering will be forged into tears of joy.
An awful team is a tough watch; a really good, almost great one, rips your heart out from your chest and leaves scars for years to come.
Indiana, somehow, completely avoided being pretty good. They were awful. Then they were an absolute juggernaut.
Hell — even the Georgia Bulldogs had to endure some heartbreak (losing in dramatic fashion in overtime of a national championship game) before their own dynastic run.
So yes — Indiana engineered a storybook rise to incredible highs in rapid succession.
But that’s my whole point — they skipped the very part that makes it all worth it.
The thrill of victory is so strong because of the pain of defeat.
Indiana never lost to Ohio State when leading by double digits in consecutive years, forced to sit with the sting of defeat for 364 days.
They never blew leads at home to rival teams costing them a shot at the playoff, watching rival teams fight it out for immortality and their fanbases celebrating.
They never spent a year believing this was finally the team to get them over the top — only to be crushingly disappointed with a loss to a team they should have beat by double digits. Wondering, how did it all go so wrong when we were so close?
Indiana was simply awful. A school and community who had accepted their position as a basketball powerhouse. Then they increased their investment in football, hired a 62 year old who had never been a Power 4 head coach, signed a bunch of experienced players from smaller schools and then proceeded to absolutely steamroll everyone and win a national championship in 24 months.
Photo: Michael Hickey/Getty Images
So congrats on being the first team in over a century to go 16-0. Heisman quarterback, dream season.
My extremely petty and biased self will always mark it with an asterisk because they (the fandom) didn’t earn it.
The only championships that count are the ones raised with scar tissue.
Epilogue:
It’s absolutely ridiculous to say who “deserves” to win a championship and who doesn’t. However, I stand by my thesis and will embrace being petty and biased as the freaking Indiana Hoosiers celebrate a national championship. At least Cignetti is from Pittsburgh.
In 2020 Indiana finally had a good year and won the Big Ten. Then then Big Ten Conference literally changed their own rules to keep Indiana out of the Big Ten title game and make sure Ohio State played in it. So, yes, Indiana fans have known the heartbreak of thinking they were on the doorstep to greatness only to have it ripped away from them at the last minute.
Of course they also had a coach who was improving the program year over year and raising the hopes of Indiana fans everywhere. Then he died of brain cancer.
So maybe next time you write an article seemingly based off of your own personal vibes, you can try to actually know what you're talking about.
Don’t hold back! Tell us what you really think.