Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End
Searching for meaning in a most unlikely college football championship matchup
It’s closing time … at least, for the 2025-26 college football season.
On Monday night, we’ll crown a new college football national champion. We’ll either watch Curt Cignetti hoist a trophy as crimson confetti falls, delivering the Indiana Hoosiers the program’s first national title in the sport … or we’ll watch Mario Cristobal deliver the Miami Hurricanes their first national championship in nearly a quarter-century, fulfilling the promise he made to his alma mater to return the program to glory.
These are two pretty spectacular storylines. These are two endlessly fascinating teams that took endlessly fascinating paths to get to this point. Miami was the very last team into the 12-team College Football Playoff field as an at-large team, divisive and polarizing after more than a month spent arguing about Miami-Notre Dame (and then a week spent arguing about Miami-Notre Dame-Alabama). And Indiana started this season with more losses than any other program in the history of college football. Now, the Hoosiers are one win away from being the first team in the sport’s history to go 16-0 — and they’d do so with impressive wins over Ohio State, Alabama, Miami and Oregon (2x).
Indiana is both a Cinderella and a bully. If you watch them play, you know exactly what I mean. You can’t ignore the history of the program, but you also can’t ignore how thoroughly they destroy opponents. The Hoosiers got so good so quickly it’s actually broken a lot of people’s brains. (This is generally fun and harmless, except when it leads to a bunch of baseless conspiracy theories, but I digress.)
Regardless of who wins the game on Monday night, this championship game feels like a pivot point for college football. For so long, we had a sport dominated by bluebloods and a system that was largely designed to keep Davids far away from Goliath, at least when it came to handing out trophies at the end of the year. For so long, there was never really a path for a team like Indiana to ever attract and retain enough talent to compete for a national championship. That was before the transfer portal allowed rosters to change drastically from one year to another. That was before transfer rules changed to allow athletes to have immediate eligibility. And that was before the NIL era allowed schools with billionaire boosters and giant alumni bases to invest in football in ways we’d never seen before (because it wasn’t legal).
But now we live in a world in which Indiana (!) is elite. Indiana (!) has the best coach in the sport. Indiana (!) is the football program everyone’s trying to replicate, particularly looking at the way they identify, develop and retain talent.
The Hoosiers now invest and support Cignetti like any other elite football program does, which is the main reason I don’t think Indiana is going anywhere in the years to come. Hell, they’re undefeated and about to play for a national title with a bunch of former three-star recruits. Their core was recruited to JMU. Their big offseason acquisition was the quarterback of a Cal team that went 6-7! I get why the rest of the country is gobsmacked by what they’re seeing out of the Hoosiers. On paper, it doesn’t make any sense.
Thankfully, games are played on grass (and turf) — and not on paper. And we’ve got one last one before we close the book on the 2025-26 season. Will Monday night end with the Hoosiers making more history? Or will Miami pull off the upset and defy its doubters yet again, proving once and for all that The U is Back?
I can’t wait to find out.
My upcoming schedule:
I’m currently in Miami, gearing up for the final weekend of the season. I’ll be part of SiriusXM's live coverage from Saturday’s Media Day, bouncing around and grabbing interviews with Miami and Indiana players. We’ll be live on Ch. 84 from 8am to noon ET.
My podcast partner-in-crime, Joshua Perry, is here in Miami with me. So, we’ll record an instant reaction episode of Rushing The Field immediately following Monday night’s game. I’m sure most of you will be sleeping as we’re recording, so be sure to subscribe to the pod wherever you get your podcasts so you’ll get notified when we’ve got the episode up. It’ll be perfect to go along with your morning coffee!
I’ll have a column up on NBCSports.com overnight Monday into Tuesday as well. You can bookmark my author page to see all my written work on the site.
I’ll be on College Sports Today on SiriusXM Ch. 84 on Wednesday as usual! We’re live from noon to 3pm ET.
What I’ve been up to:
After Indiana crushed Oregon last week in Atlanta, I wrote about the feelings of invincibility and inevitability surrounding these Hoosiers. Indiana is the best team in college football, and here’s why.
I took a deep dive into college football’s calendar problem + explored some of the ideas that coaches have to fix things. The story includes an in-depth look at the transfer portal timing, the coaching carousel and other pressure points.
First thoughts on the Indiana-Miami matchup, with keys to the game.
Here’s the latest episode of Rushing The Field. Joshua Perry and I broke down the title game and gave our thoughts on Dante Moore’s return to Oregon (as well as Marcus Freeman’s decision to stay at Notre Dame amid NFL interest). You can watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple or Spotify.
National championship preview:
Here’s a snippet from the pod, as Joshua and I discuss what we expect to see on Monday night: