Hoosiers finish perfect season with first championship

Mendoza and Indiana complete unlikely run, toppling Miami in the title game to go 16-0.

- EDDIE PELLS

ELIJAH SARRATT shares the trophy with teammates after Indiana beat Miami 27-21 on Monday night.

(PATRICK SMITH Getty Image)

Fernando Mendoza lowered his pads into a defender, spun in a full circle, used his hand to keep his balance, then launched himself horizontally and reached the ball over the goal line — an Indiana touchdown and a ready-made poster pic for a title run straight from the movies.

Maybe they'll call it “Hoosiers.”

The Heisman Trophy winner’s touchdown Monday night put an exclamation point on a 27-21 win over Miami that closed out an undefeated season and brought an improbable national championship to a program that had known nothing but losing and indifference for almost 140 years. “Let me tell you: We won the national championship at Indiana University.

It can be done,” said coach Curt Cignetti, who took over a program with a nation-leading 713 losses and turned it into the game’s biggest winner in the span of two years.

"Let me tell you: We won the national championship at Indiana University. It can be done," said coach Curt Cignetti, who took over a program with a nation-leading 713 losses and turned it into the game's biggest winner in the span of two years.

Cignetti, the 64-year-old coaching lifer, started it. Mendoza helped get the Hoosiers over the line. He finished with 186 yards passing, but it was that tackle-breaking, sprawled-out, 12-yard touchdown run on fourth and four with 9:18 left that defined this game — and the Hoosiers’ season.

Indiana would not be denied.

“I had to go airborne,” said Mendoza, who had his lip split and his arm bloodied by a ferocious Miami defense that sacked him three times and hit him many more. “I would die for my team.”