Trying to put Indiana football\u2019s two-year turnaround under coach Curt Cignetti in context requires some creativity. You can\u2019t just look around college football and find suitable comparisons.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve already written about how Indiana had the longest preseason odds<\/a> (100-to-1) of any champion this century, and twice as long as the closest team in that period (2010 Auburn was 50-to-1). Looking at Cignetti\u2019s tenure, the team started his first season as coach with 500-to-1 odds. Stewart Mandel is calling<\/a> Indiana\u2019s championship \u201cthe most remarkable story in modern sports history.\u201d<\/p>\n How unique is IU\u2019s ascent in college football history?<\/p>\n There are other big turnarounds in college football, but none fully measure up.<\/p>\n College football hadn\u2019t seen a first-time champion since Florida\u2019s first title in 1996. But Florida was already a winning team long before that. The franchise had 14 top-15 seasons in the four decades before Steve Spurrier took over in 1990. In the 1980s, Florida didn\u2019t have a single losing season. That Florida was considered a breakthrough champion shows where the bar is usually placed.<\/p>\n What about bigger turnarounds? Did any start as low and then achieve as much as Indiana?<\/p>\n IU\u2019s opponent in Monday\u2019s championship game, Miami, had its own turnaround before its first national title in 1983. The Hurricanes were 42-67 in the 1970s, but by the time Miami became The U, it was coach Howard Schnellenberger\u2019s fifth season, and he had already posted three straight winning seasons and two nine-win campaigns in South Florida. Plus, Miami had five top-15 seasons in the 1950s and 1960s. Miami wasn\u2019t a winning program, but it wasn\u2019t a doormat like Indiana. Indiana had only two top-15 seasons in the entire 20th century.<\/p>\n Bill Snyder worked wonders at Kansas State and has some similarities to Cignetti in coaching style. The Wildcats had back-to-back winless seasons and had one winning season in the previous 18 years before Snyder got to Manhattan in 1989. Before Snyder arrived, the Wildcats had only made one bowl game ever (a lost Independence Bowl) and had never finished a season ranked. Under Snyder, K-State had five top-10 seasons in six years from 1997-2002. Snyder would\u2019ve made the Wildcats a College Football Playoff stalwart if there had been a 12-team playoff then.<\/p>\n In terms of historical futility, Kansas State was at least as bad as Indiana. However, the Wildcats never reached the heights of Indiana\u2019s national title.<\/p>\n In terms of a single-season surprise, 1995 Northwestern merits a mention. The other purple Wildcats just retook the \u201ctop\u201d spot from Indiana for most losses in FBS history. In 1995, Northwestern won the Big Ten and went to the Rose Bowl. Northwestern hadn\u2019t had a winning season since 1971. Like Kansas State, Northwestern absolutely fits as a viable comparison to IU in terms of losing history. Gary Barnett\u2019s Wildcats entered that bowl game ranked No. 3 in the major polls, but the Wildcats lost.<\/p>\n The shock of that turnaround was at least as strong as Indiana\u2019s, but the Wildcats did not win the national title, so it also falls just short.<\/p>\n Indiana: The lowest lows to the highest high<\/p>\n The 100-to-1 odds Indiana had to start this season are long by champion standards, but are actually the shortest odds the Hoosiers have had in the last several years.<\/p>\n Before the 2019 season, Indiana had 2000-to-1 odds to win the national title. Those odds imply a likelihood of 0.05 percent. That is virtually as close as you can get without the sportsbook saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2019 and 2020, Indiana had back-to-back winning seasons totaling 14 wins. All it took was 14 wins for that to be the program\u2019s best two-year run in nearly three decades.<\/p>\n In 2020, the Hoosiers went 6-2 during the COVID season and finished ranked 12th and 13th in the polls, which was IU\u2019s best finish since 1967.<\/p>\n In 2021, Indiana was also 100-to-1 to win the title, coming off that season with quarterback Michael Penix Jr. returning. The Hoosiers ended up winless in the Big Ten and finished 2-10. That\u2019s what Indiana football was.<\/p>\n Before what would be coach Tom Allen\u2019s last year in charge in 2023, the odds were 500-to-1.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what Cignetti inherited, along with those matching 500-to-1 odds before the 2024 season. The rest has been chronicled ad nauseam in recent weeks. IU made the CFP in Cignetti\u2019s first year, but even after that still entered this season with 100-to-1 odds.<\/p>\n There are other examples of teams that had big turnarounds or surprise seasons. Some won it all, like Miami, but didn\u2019t start from as low a place as the Hoosiers. Some did start from that low, like Kansas State and Northwestern, but didn\u2019t quite reach the pinnacle.<\/p>\n There is no comparison in college football.<\/p>\n What about other sports?<\/p>\n The records for sports betting odds don\u2019t go all the way back to the start of professional leagues, but as far as tracking goes, only one American champion had longer odds than Indiana: the 1999 St. Louis Rams, who started the season at 150-1. Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk led a surprise team that would end up winning two Super Bowls in three years.<\/p>\n To find longer odds than that, you have to reach across the Atlantic Ocean for Leicester City\u2019s famous English Premier League triumph in 2015-16. The Foxes were 5,000-to-1 to win the title. It was an incomprehensible accomplishment that will be hard to top.<\/p>\n