{"id":529808,"date":"2026-01-20T22:32:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/529808\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T22:32:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:32:20","slug":"indianas-incredible-title-run-rivals-2016-chicago-cubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/529808\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana’s incredible title run rivals 2016 Chicago Cubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s really no debating that Indiana\u2019s journey from losingest team ever to national champion<\/a> is the greatest story in college football history.<\/p>\n

No major program was as synonymous with losing as Indiana, though Northwestern, which this season passed the Hoosiers for most L\u2019s in college history,<\/a> was a close second.<\/p>\n

The real question is whether Indiana\u2019s championship is the best sports story ever, and that\u2019s an argument with no definitive answer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and rags-to-riches stories are part of every sport.<\/p>\n

Just last weekend, Chicago was celebrating the 10-year anniversary<\/a> of the end of the longest title drought in North American professional sports history \u2014 the Cubs\u2019 2016 World Series championship. They were known for decades as the \u201clovable losers,\u201d a label the franchise finally shed on one memorable November night in Cleveland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"IndianaIndiana cornerback Jamari Sharpe (22) celebrates after defeating Miami in the College Football Playoff national championship game Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo\/Marta Lavandier)<\/p>\n

The players on this IU team will celebrate this feeling for quite a while, as all champions do, but the passage of time will make it even sweeter, knowing they accomplished something many thought impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we sent a message, first of all, to society that if you keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard and you\u2019ve got the right people, anything\u2019s possible,\u201d Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said after the 27-21 win over Miami<\/a> at Hard Rock Stadium. \u201cIn our particular situation in the athletic world, college football has changed quite a bit. The balance of power also.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we have the right people on our staff, in the weight room, in the locker room, and we have great senior leadership and togetherness \u2014 and we had a really good quarterback that played his best when the chips were down. Are there eight first-round draft choices on this team? Probably not, no, there aren\u2019t. But this team, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ditto the 2016 Cubs, who had only three players with a realistic chance of making it into the Baseball Hall of Fame: starting pitcher Jon Lester, who is eligible next year; closer Aroldis Chapman; and slugger Kyle Schwarber, who has 340 home runs and should get in if he winds up with 500 or more. (Schwarber, an IU alumnus, was at the title game Monday in Miami Gardens, Fla.)<\/p>\n

Otherwise, it was a team with some very good players having career years and role players who did more than was expected of them.<\/p>\n

Indiana has a probable No. 1 draft pick in quarterback Fernando Mendoza and other potential NFL players in cornerback D\u2019Angelo Ponds, wide receivers Omar Cooper Jr. and Elijah Sarratt, offensive linemen Carter Smith and Pat Coogan and edge rusher Mikail Kamara.<\/p>\n

But it was the sum of the parts that made it all work, along with a coach in Cignetti who proved to be as good as advertised by his hype man \u2014 who happened to be himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoogle me,\u201d was the now-famous line Cignetti uttered when he came to Indiana two years ago with a Herculean task and little fanfare. His bravado \u2014 telling fans, \u201cPurdue sucks \u2026 but so does Michigan and Ohio State\u201d<\/a> \u2014 was a call to arms to wake up a moribund program that was accustomed to losing.<\/p>\n

It was reminiscent of Joe Maddon\u2019s arrival in Chicago on Nov. 3, 2014, when he sat atop a podium at the Cubby Bear and declared: \u201cI\u2019m going to be talking playoffs next year. (If not) why even report? I\u2019m going to talk playoffs and talk World Series. And I believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cubs were coming off a 73-89 season and had not yet signed Lester. Their highest-paid pitcher was Edwin Jackson, who finished 2014 with a 6.33 ERA. Schwarber, Kris Bryant and Javier B\u00e1ez were still highly touted prospects in the minors. The idea that the Cubs could win a World Series in two years was as ludicrous as Indiana winning a national title two years after Cignetti\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n

But somehow it happened.<\/p>\n

Photos: 2026 Cubs Convention<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the luck that year,\u201d first baseman Anthony Rizzo said Saturday at the Cubs Convention. \u201cWe had the juju, and we came out on top. It\u2019s so hard to finish it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indiana discovered that as well, leading by six points as Miami marched to the Hoosiers 41-yard line with less than a minute to go. But Carson Beck\u2019s long toss to Keelan Marion was picked off by cornerback Jamari Sharpe, sealing the win and starting the celebration.<\/p>\n

Marion said afterward he didn\u2019t know Beck had thrown the ball, blaming himself for the play<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got to look for the ball and make a play for him,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that\u2019s all on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course many factors contributed to the Hoosiers\u2019 win, just as the Cubs had a lot of things go right in Game 7 of the World Series after Chapman served up a game-tying home run to Rajai Davis in the eighth inning that put everyone on edge.<\/p>\n

Ben Zobrist, who came through with the go-ahead RBI double in the 10th, admitted to fans Saturday at the Cubs Convention that after feeling confident about the team all year, he momentarily wondered if the curse was real after Davis\u2019 home run.<\/p>\n

\"IndianaIndiana fans celebrate in the streets of downtown Bloomington, Ind., after defeating Miami in the College Football Playoff national championship game Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (Jon Cherry\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Indiana fans also might have been wondering if their bubble was going to burst in the last minute of Monday\u2019s game. A lifetime of losing will do that to you.<\/p>\n

But the dream was real, and it was spectacular. The football version of the movie \u201cHoosiers\u201d played out just like the script demanded.<\/p>\n

The party will go on in Bloomington, Ind., for quite some time, and as the victory sinks in, the journey will grow more special as the years go on. Zobrist said the magnitude of the Cubs\u2019 Game 7 win took a while to process.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time it definitely felt surreal and you\u2019re kind of like, \u2018What\u2019s happening to us?\u2019 as you\u2019re experiencing all that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut now, after experiencing 10 years of love from this city and Cubs fans \u2026 talking to the players now and all the respect and credibility they give you just because you were part of that team, it\u2019s a pretty special feeling to know you were part of doing something really special for this city and the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cubs haven\u2019t won it all since, but the 2016 team\u2019s love affair with fans never ended. And no matter what happens next to the Hoosiers, Cignetti and his 16-0 championship team will be legends in Indiana for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n

You can Google it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s really no debating that Indiana\u2019s journey from losingest team ever to national champion is the greatest story…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[3882,5,32982,138,24,4245,33557,161,55195,53467,70249,37390,70250,25957,4,1039],"class_list":["post-529808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-cubs","tag-anthony-rizzo","tag-baseball","tag-ben-zobrist","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-chicagocubs","tag-college-football-playoff","tag-cubs","tag-curt-cignetti","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-indiana-football","tag-indiana-university","tag-jamari-sharpe","tag-joe-maddon","tag-mlb","tag-world-series"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115929805996251519","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}