January 1, 1968, ushered in one of the most chaotic and consequential years in American history and it’s oddly fitting that the year began with an out-of-the-ordinary event taking place in California. A Hailey’s Comet-like oddity that when you think about it, doesn’t make sense considering what came beforehand and what came afterwards.
The Indiana Hoosiers participated in the Rose Bowl. Yes, that really happened.
Indiana football was known as a historical loser well before the 1967 season and never came close to sniffing the Big Ten’s postseason destiny of a trip to Pasadena. Beginning in 1947, the Big Ten (then Big Nine) and Pacific Coast Conference came to an agreement to pit their respective conference champions against each other in the Rose Bowl, bonding the two leagues through various iterations for decades to come. The very idea of briefly escaping the frigid winters of the Midwest for a pleasant New Year’s vacation in sunny Southern California became the aspirational goal for every program in the Big Ten and nine programs accomplished this feat through the first 20 years of this tradition.
You could probably already guess that the 10th program that didn’t achieve this glory was Indiana, who had failed to finish higher than sixth in the league standings during this two-decade stretch. The downtrodden program took a swing in 1957 by hiring successful Wyoming coach Phil Dickens, who proceeded to immediately commit recruiting violations in such a brazen and sloppy manner that the NCAA dropped the hammer on the entire athletic department in the early 1960’s. The sanctions hamstrung the struggling football program even further and new head coach John Pont inherited a mess in the middle of the decade, bottoming out with a 1-8-1 record in 1966.
And then they won the dang conference the following year. Wait, what?
The “Cardiac Kids” Indiana team of 1967 was something straight out of a Disney movie as Pont’s group won seven one-score games. A second-half comeback against Kentucky, a fake field-goal for a touchdown against Iowa, and taking the Old Oaken Bucket from rival Purdue were among the highlights of the Hoosiers’ shocking 9-1 campaign that year, forcing a rare three-way tie for the Big Ten title with the Boilermakers and Minnesota. At the time, the conference had a “no repeat” rule for its Rose Bowl representative and since Purdue had gone the year before, they were out. And considering that IU had never made the pilgrimage out west while Minnesota had made two earlier in the decade, the Hoosiers got the nod for Pasadena.
That brings us back to New Year’s Day 1968, where Indiana stepped into the most storied venue in college football to battle the consensus national champion USC, fresh off beating UCLA in a “Game of the Century.” The Hoosiers’ luck ran out in a 14-3 loss to the Trojans and Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson, who would of course go on to be known for his Pro Football Hall of Fame career and absolutely nothing else.
That brief moment in the California sun proved to be fleeting for Indiana as it quickly regressed back into being a proverbial doormat in the Big Ten for several decades, even taking the mantle of the losingest program in the history of college football. But the “Cardiac Kids”of that year was an example of the sport at its best. A long-suffering program seeing the stars align to make the dream of standing on the field with USC in the freaking Rose Bowl a reality. Their wildest imaginations came true.
This year’s Indiana Hoosiers will compete in the the 2026 Rose Bowl this afternoon as both the No. 1 team in the country and a favorite over a historical juggernaut in the Alabama Crimson Tide. Yes, this is actually happening.
Indiana’s rise over the past two years eerily echoes its out-of-nowhere run in 1967 as new head coach Curt Cignetti inherited a program that experienced just four winning seasons over the prior 30 years combined. Effective use of the transfer portal, excellent player development, and some just flat out good ball coachin’ were the ingredients that has allowed his Hoosier program to go from Big Ten doormat to Big Ten powerhouse almost overnight. He’s now responsible for the only two 10+ win seasons in IU history and as a result, Northwestern now wears the crown as the losingest program in college football. And unlike the scrappy “Cardiac Kids” of ‘67, Cig’s group has absolutely bludgeoned opponents, entering the postseason with an average scoring margin of 27.6 points per game this year.
Yet despite two years of proof of concept, there is still a reluctancy to consider the Hoosiers on par or even better than the sport’s traditional powers. That was the case entering last month’s Big Ten Championship Game, where it faced reigning national champion Ohio State in a high-stakes showdown of two programs that have lived completely different lives in the same league. What resulted was the Hoosiers going blow-for-blow with the Buckeyes for the entire evening in Indianapolis, triumphing 13-10 to win the program’s first outright conference title in 80 years.
On top of their first trip to the Rose Bowl since ‘67, the school was also rewarded in the form of star transfer quarterback Ferndando Mendoza becoming the current face of college football by winning the Heisman Trophy and you’re about to see his face even more as the possible No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. In just 24 months, a beleaguered program saw their wildest imaginations true and unlike that Hoosier team of the late ‘60’s, there could be some staying power here.
If you’ve noticed, I haven’t mentioned the term “College Football Playoff” until now because frankly, I find the playoff to be intrusive. We have engineered a system that no one is ever satisfied with and the solution is to keep making tweaks that will inevitably make the problems even worse. From Notre Dame embarrassing itself after being left out of the dance to tv analysts wanting the Group of Five summarily executed for simply existing, the constant discourse of this tournament is tiring and the over-emphasis on determining a national champion lessens the impact of things that come before it.
Take the aforementioned Big Ten title game between Ohio State and Indiana. This was a No. 1 vs. No. 2 battle between the undefeated reigning national champion and an undefeated upstart that was literally the face of losing in the sport. That game played out as an epic down-to-the-wire battle where the underdog knocked off the blueblood by a field goal, earning both the conference championship and a trip to Pasadena. The magnitude of that specific result would’ve been something that we talked about for decades and instead, it has been rendered as just another game on the way to this 12-team tournament that we’ve concocted. No different than a Week 17 matchup between two playoff-bound teams in the NFL.
That irks me and is a huge reason why I’ve decided to take up your time with this piece. Indiana is 13-0 and in the freaking Rose Bowl man. Something like that is only supposed to happen in the college football video game and yet here it is playing out right before our eyes. Every fan of a “have not” program dreams of a day where they have their moment in the sun. Where the combo of institutional ambition, a great coaching staff, and even greater players can allow you to improve your lot in life. That’s what this gloriously dumb sport is about and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.
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