What Gophers football needs to do in order to become the next Indiana

Every college football program in the country will be trying to replicate the Hoosiers' two-year run to a national championship.

Dec 26, 2025; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Minnesota Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck with the trophy after defeating the New Mexico Lobos in overtime of the Rate Bowl at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

The Indiana Hoosiers completed the greatest two-year turnaround in the history of college football on Monday night with the first national championship in program history. Every program in the country will now be looking to replicate it. Can the Minnesota Golden Gophers do it? Here's what would need to happen.

Buy-in from EVERYONE

Obviously, hiring Curt Cignetti and signing a Heisman Trophy-winning QB in the transfer portal like Fernando Mendoza are the biggest reasons Indiana was able to win it all, but it took buy-in from everyone to get to that point.

The President of Indiana University, Pamela Whitten, had a very interesting interview on The Pat McAfee Show on Monday, where she talked about the path to bring the Hoosiers to the top of the mountain.

"This actually started five years ago when I came to Indiana, and I met with our amazing athletic director Scott Dolson, and said, 'Hey, Scott, college football is about 75-85% of revenue in college sports.' I think my exact words were, 'We can't treat it like an intramural sport anymore.' Let's get serious about it.'"

"This all started five years ago when I came to Indiana and I met with our amazing athletic director Scott Dolson..

We took a couple years and we got ready then we brought in the best coach in the country"

Pamela Whitten #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/R8gtBdiOPn

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) January 19, 2026

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Mark Coyle has been the University of Minnesota's director of athletics since 2016. He hired P.J. Fleck as the program's football coach one year into his tenure, and it's fair to say they've brought a level of consistency to Gophers football that the program hadn't had in quite a while.

The reason Indiana and Cignetti are national champions is that they thought bigger. Dr. Rebecca Cunningham is the University of Minnesota's third full-time president since Coyle was hired. It was Eric W. Kaler, Joan Gabel, and then Cunningham. The difference between 7 to 8 wins every year and a true national title contender is buy-in from everyone.

Dr. Cunningham became the University's 18th President in September, 2024. Her first 15th months at the school has presented its fair share of challenges, but she will have to prove a desire to be a National Title-contending athletics program.

Roster construction

The biggest misconception from casual fans about Indiana's run is that they did it with more money than everyone else. That is not the case. 247Sports' talent composite ranking, based on recruiting rating and stars for every player on a team, has Indiana at No. 72 on the list for the 2025-26 season. For reference, Minnesota was No. 41, and Miami (FL) was No. 15.

Mendoza obviously did not come cheap in the transfer portal after a standout season at Cal, but the rest of their roster was filled with transfers from Cignetti's time at James Madison, and overlooked players who took advantage of an opportunity in a great system.

The Hoosiers did not just out-spend everyone for an elite roster. Cignetti and his entire coaching staff out-scouted the rest of the country. Players like D'Angelo Ponds, Aiden Fisher, and Elijah Sarratt followed Cignetti from James Madison to Bloomington because of his vision, not solely for money.

Billionaires don't throw around money without proof of concept. Indiana will now likely be among the top spenders in the Big Ten going forward due to a huge donation from IU grad Mark Cuban and a large alumni base. Cuban wasn't going to invest in a first-year head coach from JMU. He invested in a head coach who led the Hoosiers to a national title. There's plenty of reason to think a similar reaction could happen at a place like Minnesota, but just remember, Cignetti did it with his guys first.

Retaining assistant coaches

Fleck has built a competitive roster at Minnesota, but one of the biggest things possibly holding the program back is the retention of assistant coaches. On the other sideline of Monday's national championship was Corey Hetherman calling plays for the Hurricanes' defense. He completely turned around that unit in 2025-26. He could've been one of Fleck's best hires of his Minnesota tenure, but he only had one season as the Gophers' defensive coordinator before leaving for a bigger opportunity.

The list of outgoing coaches under Fleck is long, including top assistants Kirk Ciarrocca, Joe Rossi, and Winston DeLattiboudere III. They all left for similar jobs, moves that appeared to be motivated by money. Indiana even had to handle a similar situation when co-offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri left for the same job at UCLA after the 2024 season, but the Hoosiers did not make excuses.

Indiana's quick two-year turnaround makes it easier to retain coaches compared to the nine years Fleck has been at Minnesota, but both defensive coordinator Bryant Haines and offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan are expected to be back in Bloomington next season.

Ultimately, Minnesota is among the bottom of the Big Ten in terms of assistant coach salary pool. They increased their pool by more than $1 million last offseason, but they ranked 15th out of 15 public Big Ten institutions in 2024. Fleck has made dozens of great hires throughout his Gophers' tenure, but doing it every single offseason becomes tiring. The chances of the program taking the next step will always be low until that pool improves.

Next steps

Is Fleck the same level of coach as Cignetti? That's up for debate, but Indiana's run shows that it's possible at a school like Minnesota. Every program in the country will be looking for the next Cignetti, but the first step is total buy-in and raising the standard. Indiana didn't care about its history; it cared about putting itself among the class of the sport.

If the University of Minnesota wants to swim in the same pool, they have to stop being satisfied with Rate Bowl wins and start focusing on reaching the College Football Playoff.