No. 6 Indiana takes one last championship victory lap before opening season against North Texas

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — The Indiana Hoosiers took one last victory lap before Saturday’s season opener against North Texas.

And while coach Curt Cignetti kept his team in the locker room for the unveiling of football’s version of a championship banner before kickoff, the fans inside sold out Memorial Stadium were exhilarated to see words they never imagined: “2025 National Champions.”

The party started hours before the stadium gates opened, and it seemed everyone dressed for the occasion. Many were decked out in championship garb, some with T-shirts that read “16-0” with an outline of the state in the middle of the zero. There were candy-striped shorts, jerseys of current and former players even plastic necklaces bearing a single word: “Cignetti.”

It was a Week 1 football environment unlike anything Bloomington had ever seen.

“We go to a lot of Colts games, Pacers games and Fever games, but I think so far this has been one of the best atmospheres we’ve been to,” Indianapolis resident Jake Prater said referring to Indiana’s three pro sports teams as he strolled around the stadium with his young son. “It’s been enjoyable. He’s had a great time. I think it’s just a great place for our family to come and experience it.”

And Prater, who grew up in Indiana and is an active duty recruiter for the U.S. Army, couldn’t wait to soak it in. He arrived at 8:30 a.m., 3 1/2 hours before kickoff, dressed in the No. 15 jersey of Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza with that plastic Cignetti necklace.

But what he, like everyone else, really wanted to see was the concrete strip on the second deck of the stadium paying tribute to the team that took one of the most struggling programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision to national champion in just two years.

It was a storybook season nobody will soon forget, one Hoosiers fans never want to forget.

They won the school’s first Big Ten title since 1967. They won the Rose Bowl for the first time in school history, and, yes, they beat Miami on its home field to complete the title run and become the first major college football team to finish 16-0 since the 1890s.

But none of it mattered to Cignetti on Saturday.

The sixth-ranked Hoosiers rolled to a 52-16 victory despite running only 46 offensive plays, having a defense struggle to get stops and new quarterback Josh Hoover having a bloodied face mask in the first half.

“We didn’t tackle well, we did not play well on defense, period,” Cignetti said. “There’s a lot of corrections to make offensively and I thought special teams played pretty well.”

Despite field temperatures topping 120 degrees at kickoff and 152 in the second half, the seats that were only half full and nearly empty by game’s end for Cignetti’s first home game in 2024 were nearly completely full of towel-waving fans 30 minutes before the game started.

They reveled in being Fox’s first “Big Noon Saturday” game of the season, watching the new hype video and hearing “We Are The Champions” blaring on the public address system in a vastly different environment from the frigid temperatures when Indiana returned home in January.

Cignetti and his players, though, were busy behind the scenes, going through their final pregame — allowing everyone else to savor that one shining moment one more time before starting all over again.

“I think our whole thing has always been keeping the main thing the main thing, controlling the controllables,” Cignetti said. “It’s all about preparing to the best of our ability and putting it between the white lines against the first opponent.”

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