They Lived Through 3-9. Now, Cignetti Believers Savor Indiana Football's Run to Title

MIAMI — Together, they hurried toward the side of a confetti-filled, team-only celebration zone. Together, they posed and smiled at a camera, savoring the immediate aftermath of a fever dream hardly worth believing.

Together, Indiana football sixth-year senior offensive tackle Kahlil Benson, redshirt junior guard Bray Lynch and redshirt junior linebackers Isaiah Jones and Kaiden Turner basked in the glory of the Hoosiers' 56-22 win over Oregon in the Peach Bowl, clinching the program's first trip to the national championship.

“The OG's,” yelled an exuberant Turner while taking his place for the photo.

Soon, they sang "Indiana, Our Indiana," to an audience full of captivated listeners — the crimson-clad Hoosier fans who packed Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the latest edition of college football's greatest turnaround, if not Hollywood's greatest movie.

For Benson, for Lynch, for Jones and for Turner — merely an extension of the few and the proud who spurned the transfer portal and believed in coach Curt Cignetti’s vision — moments like that once seemed a fairytale.

Together, two years prior, they struggled through a 3-9 season, the program's third consecutive losing campaign and the end of coach Tom Allen's time in Bloomington. They’d lost the coach who recruited them, who believed in them, who gave them an opportunity to play in the Big Ten.

Four days after Indiana fired Allen, the Hoosiers’ starting left tackle, Carter Smith, learned through Twitter that Indiana hired Cignetti from James Madison University. By then, several of Smith’s teammates — including the team’s leading passer, runner and receiver — had already entered the transfer portal.

Smith and several others chose to stay and meet Cignetti. They wanted to see his attitude and hear his message and plan for how to revitalize one of college football’s most dormant programs. They left the first team meeting Dec. 1, 2023, with an immediate explanation behind Cignetti’s long-tenured success.

Cignetti outlined his blueprint and the heights it allowed him to reach. He didn’t ask his players if they’d follow it — he told them. He also said they’d be successful. His words weren’t directed for the mass. They were meant for the few, the proud, who truly wanted to be part of the solution.

“The main thing he was preaching was he wants guys that want to be here,” sixth-year senior receiver E.J. Williams Jr. told Indiana Hoosiers On SI. “He's a winner and he wants guys who want to be a part of it. He doesn't want ‘eye guys.’ He wants guys that's going to do their job to the best of their ability to benefit the team.”

Be it Cignetti’s words or the way he delivered them, Smith felt an instant change.

“It was definitely very different from what Coach Allen usually preached,” Smith told Indiana Hoosiers On SI, “but it was definitely in a good way.”

Some heard Cignetti’s message, his passion, his intentions, and still chose to leave. Others already in the portal may have heard about it through second-hand sources and didn’t budge. Turner admitted he was skeptical and questioned if Cignetti was all-talk.

Within weeks, Cignetti made him a believer through how he taught preparation and embedded a mindset.

Life, Jones said, is about making decisions and sticking with them. Those who gambled on Cignetti are reaping the rewards. Many of those who didn’t are now watching from afar, forced to carry the burden of “What if?” as the No. 1 Hoosiers (15-0) march toward Monday night’s national championship game against No. 10 Miami (13-2) at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.

“Being able to stay here and talking with guys that did leave, not going to say they regret it (or it) still haunts them, but they still text about it and ask how we're doing and kind of wish they were still here with us,” Jones said. “So, I mean, still love all those guys and everyone has to make their own decision in life.

“I'm pretty dang sure I'm glad I stuck with mine.”

'I never thought it was going to really be a possibility'

While the likes of Benson, Lynch, Jones and Turner — and, a little behind them, Williams — jumped and sang the school’s fight song in Atlanta, only one member of their mini-fraternity received a bid to take the stage.

There stood Smith, wearing a gray Peach Bowl Champions hat and white championship T-shirt draped over his pads while cream and crimson-colored confetti rained down from the rafters. He was surrounded by a group that has embraced its tag as misfits and rejects, most overlooked and under-recruited.

There were three James Madison transfers in linebacker Aiden Fisher, cornerback D’Angelo Ponds and receiver Elijah Sarratt, two James Madison recruits who de-committed and became part of Cignetti’s first Indiana signing class in edge rusher Daniel Ndukwe and defensive tackle Mario Landino, and two first-year Hoosiers in Heisman-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza and tight end Riley Nowakowski.

Smith was the lone representative of the few and the proud.

Those who stayed at Indiana through the coaching change and are still with the team entering the national time game — 27 players in all, only 16 on scholarship — noted there’s camaraderie amongst them. But there are no factions, no cliques, between this unified group of “brothers,” as Benson called them.

The Hoosiers, with over 100 players on their roster, are full of different backgrounds, different journeys, different stories. But they’re connected through a like-minded, deep-rooted desire to win, which has formed a unique, team-wide camaraderie.

“It all kind of started with the guys who came in, too, from JMU — a program that really came in and knew how to win,” Smith said. “And I think it really meshed well with the guys who stuck here and really wanted to win, as well. I think that's why the equation works so well and shows out on the field now.”

Momentum shifted soon after Cignetti arrived. Jones said he felt the culture change within a few weeks. During spring practice, Turner said Cignetti set the standard from the bottom of the roster to the top, emphasizing every player needed the same type of preparation. Teams, Cignetti preached, are only as strong as their weakest link.

Success came instantly. The Hoosiers went 11–1 in the regular season, earning the No. 10 seed in the College Football Playoff. Exactly one year after Cignetti’s infamous, “I win. Google me,” press conference statement, Indiana played Notre Dame in the first game of the 12-team Playoff era.

Though the Hoosiers fell 27–17 in South Bend, the season at large — the best in school history at the time — proved as a springboard to Indiana’s greatest encore.

“It’s started to feel real now, but last year, it kind of felt more like a dream,” junior safety Amare Ferrell told Indiana Hoosiers On SI. “But being able to go to the 12-team Playoff was just the start of something bigger.

“So once we made it there, this year it's kind of like, ‘Okay, we made it to the playoffs. Now, it's time to take the next step and win a national championship.’”

Indiana added key pieces like Mendoza, like Nowakowski, like center Pat Coogan. It also brought back two others in Benson and safety Louis Moore, who spent multiple years in Bloomington but transferred when Cignetti arrived.

Benson, who played for the Hoosiers from 2020–23, transferred to Colorado in 2024. When he returned to Bloomington in the spring of 2025, he instantly saw how drastically the standard had changed from the previous coach staff to the one set by Cignetti and his assistants.

“That's exactly what it is,” Benson said. “Knowing the standard is the standard, we're all going to go through the same thing, so why not just do it together and just get through it together at the same time?”

The few, the proud, chose exactly that. They’re the “OG’s,” otherwise known as the “Uncs,” Benson said.

But they’re also those who, if they could share a conversation with themselves from the winter when Cignetti arrived, would speak with a special tone of satisfaction, gratification and accomplishment few could’ve envisioned.

“I would say up to this point, it's the best decision he's made in his entire life,” Jones said of his message to his 2-year younger self. “Staying to be a part of this and be a part of this program, this team, this brotherhood, being under Coach Cig and Haines, I think that's what's really accelerated my game and turned me into the player I am today. It's probably the best decision I made.”

Smith knew at the time he made the right decision and wouldn’t need a long conversation. Still, he’d offer a bit of advice.

“I think he's going to be in for a surprise,” Smith said, smiling.

Redshirt junior receiver Omar Cooper Jr., who leads the team with 64 catches and 866 receiving yards to go along with 13 touchdowns, admitted he thought about leaving the Hoosiers after Allen was fired. He also considered transferring last winter.

Cooper, an Indianapolis native, leaned on his local ties and the brotherhood he’d formed. He chose to trust the process and try to maximize another opportunity in Bloomington. He’s glad he did, and he’d say the same to his prior self.

“I would tell him, ‘Definitely, you should stay,’” Cooper told Indiana Hoosiers On SI. “Because the ride we've been on is the ride you always dream of being a part of, growing up playing football. So, playing college football, and then being here where we’re at now, is just a blessing.

“I would have told myself to stay, fight through it and better times would come.”

Turner, who arrived at Indiana with Cooper in 2022, wasn’t sure about the latter part.

“Honestly, I think we always had the talent,” Turner said, “but, like, just from history, I never thought it was going to really be a possibility.”

Though he left for a year, Benson carried more optimism than his teammates. He’s not sure it would’ve been “something crazy to say” if he’d learned in 2023 that he’d be playing in the national title game two seasons later. He always believed Indiana could get better and reach grand heights, he just didn’t know when.

Now with a chance to sit on college football’s biggest throne, Benson and his fellow survivors relish the opportunity at hand — because they know how hard life gets at rock bottom.

“We always keep each other tight, because we remember, like, where we don't want to be at,” Benson said. “So, it's just kind of a different thing. We put the work in. We've been in those lows before, so why would we want to drop down to that level?”

'We've come from the lowest of lows'

Sometimes, Ferrell and fellow members of the few, the proud, reminisce on old memories from the team that went 3–9 in 2023. They often joke and laugh about it, amused at how far the program has come.

“We always talk about the differences of the program,” Ferrell said. “How different it was and how different it is now.”

Ferrell marveled at the turnaround. He repeated himself a few times, as if recognizing the improbability of it all.

“I mean, look where we’re at right now,” Ferrell said. “We're preparing to play in the national championship game coming from a 3–9 season.”

Ferrell was a freshman in 2023. He only saw the finality of Indiana’s pre-Cignetti era of doom. Jones, who arrived in 2022, has marginally more experience.

Through his first two seasons at Indiana, Jones won seven games total. Since Cignetti arrived, the Hoosiers are 26–2 entering Monday night’s national championship game. They nearly quadrupled their win total from 2023 to 2024, and perhaps more impressive, Jones has over twice as many wins this season than he did from 2022–23 combined.

“All the guys that stayed are my best friends, including the guys that came in the last two years,” Jones said. “But just being a part of something where you didn't see much success and then you see all your hard work transpire to this, it's pretty special and exciting to see.

“When you go from a team that is winning only four games, three games, to winning in a year — almost doubling those wins — it's pretty exciting. It feels good to see your hard work and all the preparation you did finally come to fruition.”

Cignetti’s blueprint figuratively involves planting seeds. For years — nearly as long as Indiana has played football — the garden sat empty. No crops grew, and if they did, they didn’t last long.

Now, the Hoosiers have one of college football’s most bountiful harvests.

“It's always good to see the guys that stuck around, see it through, (get) to see their flowers and the benefits of blooming those flowers,” Williams said. “The flowers (are) finally blooming and showing the benefit of them staying, sticking around in Bloomington and believing in Coach Cignetti's process that he brought here for us.

“So, it's just always great, and it's a blessing to be a part of this.”

The journey hasn’t yet ended. The final chapter, as Cignetti said Sunday, still hasn’t been written. The ride, for those who stayed, has been rewarding — but it hasn’t delivered the ultimate prize.

Indiana has the pen in its hand, and the Hoosiers are 60 minutes away from perfection, from capping this mythical rise with one final punctuation. That remains their focus, not the fetters Cignetti helped them escape.

“I mean, I think everybody has the same thought as I do: Still got one more to go,” Smith said. “But we're always going to be able to treasure this with our boys.”

The Hoosiers hope they’ll get one more magical night to celebrate this team and the ride it’s taken. Another night where confetti falls, where they get new hats and T-shirts to commemorate their accomplishment, where they get to sing “Indiana, Our Indiana,” to a stadium full of fans who longed for moments like it.

And for Turner, for Lynch, for Jones, for Benson and the rest of the few and proud, another night to take a picture with the “OGs.” They’re an embodiment of those who chose to stay — and now get the chance to revel in Indiana’s glory days — together.

“We've come from the lowest of lows,” Turner said, “and now, we've worked our way back up to the top.”