BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The Memorial Stadium upper press box has not changed much, but everything else has. The packed house, a sea of red, the campus buzz and, of course, an undefeated Indiana University football team.
On Saturday, I covered my first Indiana game in more than 30 years, since my senior year of college. I had watched last season’s burst to the College Football Playoff from my home in Arizona, not really understanding — or believing — what was happening. It didn’t seem real.
As a student reporter, I covered the Hoosiers from 1993 to 1994. Those years were under Bill Mallory, an old-school coach who bristled anytime someone suggested a basketball school couldn’t win big in football. His belief seemed well-intentioned, but far-fetched.
Before Saturday’s game — a 31-7 win over Wisconsin — I visited the Herman B Wells library and looked up the last story I had written from Memorial Stadium. On Nov. 12, 1994, Ohio State pulled away from the Hoosiers to win 32-17. From the Indiana Daily Student archives:
Chris Dittoe walked slowly and awkwardly into Saturday’s postgame press conference.
He had a bag of ice strapped to his left shoulder. He had a brace on his right knee. The picture didn’t lie.
In his first start of the season, the sophomore quarterback had just taken the beating of his life. And just like his bruised and battered frame, the punishment was reflected on the scoreboard.
This was the Indiana I knew. Better than most remember, but a team that almost always wilted. The Indianapolis Star might have put it best: “First leaves fall, then the Hoosiers do.”
Before I left the desert, I contacted some of the Indiana players I covered in college. (I thought they might remember me; they did not.) I wanted to ask about the program’s sudden rise under coach Curt Cignetti and the brilliance of quarterback Fernando Mendoza. But mostly I wanted to ask them what I should expect.
“You haven’t been back?” said Thomas Lewis, a star receiver and 1994 first-round NFL Draft pick. “Oh, it’s night and day.”
Once a sparsely attended facility that hosted bad teams, Memorial Stadium has become a bustling, sold-out hub as the Hoosiers march towards another CFP berth. (Marc Lebryk / Imagn Images)
The facilities are better, more competitive with their Big Ten peers. Built in 1960, Memorial Stadium has seats beyond the end zones, something it lacked for years, giving it a small-time feel. But the bigger difference, the players said, is energy.
Former defensive end Lamar Mills noticed it when he attended the Indiana State game in September. The excitement from last season’s success was still there. It’s like everyone — players, coaches, fans — walked around knowing the Hoosiers were going to win, Mills said, a program confidence he had not felt.
“Coach Cignetti gets all the credit in the world,” former tackle Tom McKinnon told me. “The guy’s phenomenal. But I also give IU a lot of credit. The stadium renovations. The commitment they’ve made to the football program. I think it’s the perfect storm of having just a fantastic leader and football coach … and IU has done a great job in saying, ‘We’re going to support the program the way it should be.’”
With the second-ranked Hoosiers leading 7-0 in Saturday’s second quarter, I met Chris Dittoe on the South end of Memorial Stadium. The former quarterback and his buddies had bought a suite a couple years earlier, before Cignetti’s first season. An impressive leap of faith.
Before buying the suite, Dittoe said he’d had season tickets for more than 20 years and that he “couldn’t give them away,” had he so desired. Before Cignetti’s hire in 2023, Indiana had posted three winning seasons over 25 years, producing a deep-rooted apathy that was hard for even Cignetti to crack. Early last season, someone posted a photo of a half-empty Memorial Stadium on Reddit and asked:
“Why are you not attending a full IU football game?”
The predictable responses:
“Tradition, mostly.”
“Because IU is historically one of the worst programs in the FBS and that culture isn’t going to change instantly after just two games with a new coach.”
“Yawn. Why would I?”
The Wisconsin game attracted 55,042 fans, the program’s fourth sellout in a row. From Dittoe’s suite, it was hard to spot an empty patch anywhere among the flag-waving masses. Frustrated, late-arriving students had trouble finding places to sit in the upper deck.
Saturday’s win moved Indiana to 11-0 with one regular-season game to go and a likely Big Ten title showdown with No. 1 Ohio State to follow. (Rich Janzaruk / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
Perhaps no one has experienced the program’s highs and lows more than Dittoe, a quarterback who played for Indiana from 1993 to 1996. As a freshman, he was a backup on an Indiana team that started 7-1 and was in the Rose Bowl hunt through Halloween. The Hoosiers finished 8-4, which then marked just the fifth time the Hoosiers had posted eight regular-season wins.
The momentum didn’t last. In Dittoe’s junior season, Indiana began a losing streak of 15 conference games, a stretch that led to Mallory’s dismissal. On Nov. 16, 1996, second-ranked Ohio State beat Indiana to secure its first Rose Bowl berth in 12 years, prompting the visiting fans — estimated at 20,000 — to flood the Memorial Stadium field. One group climbed and toppled the south goal post in celebration. When another took aim at the north goal post, Indiana players formed a protective barrier around it, an embarrassing moment that drew national ridicule.
“The lowest point of my athletic career, without a doubt,” said Dittoe, who also spent time with the Detroit Lions and in NFL Europe.
Those days are gone. President and co-founder of a public-relations firm in Indianapolis, Dittoe rallied friends and family during last season’s CFP run, telling them, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” something they may never witness again.
Yet, they have. A year after the Hoosiers finished 11-2, losing to Notre Dame in the CFP, they appear even better, ranking third nationally in points scored and second in points allowed. Before leaving for Indiana, McKinnon, the tackle I covered in college, told me the biggest difference is aggression.
“They are just so physical,” he said. “Their backs are physical. The tight ends are physical. The defensive line’s physical. The linebackers are physical. It’s a different IU than I’ve seen in the past 20 years.”
I asked Dittoe if he ever thought he’d see this. He chuckled.
“All the guys that played, whether it’s the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s or 2010s, I think we all felt like, the history of IU football, we were all very competitive,” the former quarterback said. “We were competitive against Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State for three, three-and-a-half quarters, and then we would inevitably do something wrong and lose. And now, for the last year and a half, those types of plays and mistakes that Indiana football is known for, they’re still happening, but in reverse.”
It helps to have a good quarterback. You know what you don’t notice about Fernando Mendoza from afar? How he connects with teammates.
After a shaky first half against Wisconsin, Mendoza sparked the Hoosiers. In the third quarter, the redshirt junior threw a short touchdown pass to tight end Holden Staes to give Indiana a 17-7 lead. Mendoza celebrated with his linemen, slapping hands with each, and turned to run off the field. Before reaching the sideline, he stopped and waited for Staes.
This isn’t uncommon, but Mendoza did the same thing after he was sacked on third down early in the fourth quarter. As Indiana’s punt team rushed onto the field, Mendoza slapped hands with his linemen before reaching the sideline. Every QB has a fire. Mendoza’s burns differently.
The Heisman Trophy candidate threw four touchdown passes against the Badgers. That gave him a school-record 30 for the season. After Mendoza exited late in the fourth quarter, the marching band played ABBA’s “Fernando.”
3️⃣0️⃣ TD passes (and counting) 🙌
Watch each and every one of Fernando Mendoza’s @IndianaFootball single-season record TD passes 👇 pic.twitter.com/G4ZaXeSOT5
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 15, 2025
Then there’s Cignetti, and a question I thought about most of the weekend: How often in Indiana’s history has the football coach been more popular than the basketball coach? The answer — probably never.
Before Saturday’s game, I walked around fan tailgates, well underway when I had arrived nearly four hours before kickoff, and asked about the 64-year-old Cignetti, who had previously worked as head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Elon and James Madison. Certain adjectives kept surfacing.
Dominant. Unlike the last game I covered, when Ohio State bullied Indiana, the Hoosiers are bullying opponents. Indiana’s eight conference wins this season have come by an average of 26.9 points.
Stoic. Cignetti on the sideline stations himself 25 yards ahead of the action. At Saturday’s final 2-minute timeout, Indiana flashed “Coach Cignetti Pose Cam” on the scoreboard and a good portion of the crowd placed their hands on their waists, scrunched their faces and shook their heads exactly like the irritated coach.
Transformative. In 2015, Athlon Sports ranked Big Ten stadiums based on atmosphere, tailgating, home-field advantage and other areas. Indiana placed second-to-last. “It’s tough to draw Indiana fans to football games, plain and simple,” the publication wrote. Yet under Cignetti, the Hoosiers haven’t lost a home game in two years.
After Saturday’s win, Cignetti said his Indiana arrival just happened to coincide with all the changes in college football. The transfer portal allowed him to overhaul the roster. The Hoosiers started winning. A starving fan base responded.
Under Curt Cignetti, Indiana is 22-2 the past two years. “It’s night and day,” says former Hoosiers receiver Thomas Lewis about the new culture vs. the old. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
“It’s really hard for me to step back sometimes and think about what we’ve accomplished here,” Cignetti said after improving his Indiana record to 22-2. “But it takes people, the right coaches and players in the locker room, properly led, and you got to have a blueprint plan, standards, expectations and just improve daily and create the right mindset.”
With a win at rival Purdue on Nov. 28, the Hoosiers would clinch their first Big Ten title game appearance — and a likely matchup against top-ranked Ohio State, the program that beat up Dittoe so many years ago. Does the former quarterback view the Buckeyes as a hurdle? He said he thinks of them more as Darth Vader.
“Having the ability to consistently beat Ohio State has been a Kryptonite for a lot of programs, but for an Indiana team or fan to take a dream that far, where we actually beat Ohio State, I haven’t had that dream yet,” Dittoe said. “But when we play them, our expectation would be to win. It’s so much fun to think about.”
A vision that never seemed possible.