Indiana has always been about basketball. It’s baked into the state’s DNA. From Bobby Knight’s three national titles to “Hoosiers” being preserved in the National Film Registry, everything screams basketball. But that sentiment is changing in Bloomington. The transformation is led by a 6-foot-5 quarterback who’s making Indiana football matter in ways that seemed impossible just a few years ago.​

Fernando Mendoza is putting up numbers that have Indiana fans talking about the College Football Playoff like it’s a routine destination. Through seven games in 2025, he’s thrown for 1,755 yards with 21 touchdowns against just two interceptions. He has posted an 88.6 QBR that ranks fifth nationally. The UCLA game on October 25 showed exactly what he brings to Bloomington. 

A 56-6 demolition where Fernando Mendoza accounted for four total touchdowns. It led to 8x Pro Bowler Shannon Sharpe saying on NightCap, “Look, before Peyton Manning got there, they were known for basketball and the Indy 500. Peyton turned it into, like, a football state. Indiana, it was a basketball school.” But now, Fernando Mendoza and Curt Cignetti have transformed that basketball school into a football school through and through.

The comparison to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts isn’t hyperbole. It’s actually pretty accurate when you look at what Manning did for football in Indiana. When Manning arrived in Indianapolis in 1998, the state was all about basketball. Football was an afterthought, probably third or fourth on the list of what people cared about. The Colts went 3-13 in Manning’s rookie year. But by his second season, they flipped to 13-3, and suddenly, Indianapolis started to change. 

From 2000 to 2010, the Colts won an average of 11.5 games per season and brought home a Super Bowl trophy in 2006. Manning turned a basketball-obsessed city into a football town, to the point where studies now show the Colts and NFL rank significantly higher among Indiana fans than any basketball team or league combined.​

That’s the shift happening in Bloomington right now with Fernando Mendoza and the Hoosiers. Indiana was 18-2 over the past two seasons heading into the UCLA game. This was the best two-year stretch in school history. They now sit at 8-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country, the highest AP Poll ranking the program has ever achieved. They’re not sneaking up on anyone anymore. 

The UCLA win was Indiana’s 14th straight at Memorial Stadium under head coach Curt Cignetti, with every home victory this season coming by a margin of at least 10 points. Fernando Mendoza transferred in from Cal and has been everything the program needed. His 73.5% completion rate and ability to protect the football (just two picks all season) have Indiana looking like a legitimate national championship contender.

Cignetti deserves as much credit as anyone for building this thing from scratch. He took over a dormant program in late 2023 and immediately delivered an 11-2 season with Indiana’s first-ever College Football Playoff appearance, finishing ranked No. 10 in the country. Sharpe said, “But Indiana man, that ball club, Curt Cignetti, talk about taking a dormant program and building it into a power. He’s done that. He went to the college football playoffs last year. Here, it looks like they’re in position to go back again.” Manning made Indianapolis a football city. Fernando Mendoza and Curt Cignetti are doing the same thing for Indiana University.​

Curt Cignetti and Fernando Mendoza’s effect on Bloomington

The scenes outside Memorial Stadium told you everything you need to know about what Fernando Mendoza’s emergence and Curt Cignetti’s guidance have done to this program. FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff rolled into Bloomington, and the place was absolutely buzzing. Fans packed outside The Upstairs Pub, lines stretching down the block, the energy you’d expect in Columbus or Ann Arbor. Not traditionally at a school where basketball has always been king. 

Dave Portnoy captured it perfectly when he landed in town and saw the chaos. “Holy S—,” he wrote on X after The Upstairs Pub shared a video of the frenzied crowd lined up outside. This was a full-blown cultural shift happening in real time, the kind Mendoza and Cignetti have been orchestrating all season long.​

Portnoy’s reaction didn’t stop there. When he checked into his hotel, he was floored by what he found. “I love how my hotel already has sh– named after Cignetti,” he posted to his followers. That’s the Cignetti craze in a nutshell. He’s a coach who’s been in Bloomington for less than two full seasons and already has hotels naming things after him.