Indiana and Miami will face off in the National Championship, and if the favored Hoosiers come home with the trophy, how will the team rank against college football’s gold standard?
When the Indiana Hoosiers take on the Miami Hurricanes next Monday night for all the marbles, it will mark the third consecutive season the SEC will not have a team even playing in the national title game, the first streak of its kind since right around the turn of the century.
While it may have been tough to believe before the year, the top-ranked Hoosiers are the heavy favorite. They look primed to become the first team in history to run the table and go 16-0 in the expanded playoff era.
Fresh off a 38–3 demolition of Alabama in the Rose Bowl, they made quick work of Oregon as well, rolling to a 56–22 blowout that never felt competitive.
As unlikely as it may seem, this Indiana team is doing some historic things. If they blow out Miami as well, it’s not crazy to ask where this team stacks up in comparison to some of the greatest squads in the long history of the sport.
In recent history, the 2019 LSU Tigers led by Heisman winner Joe Burrow, along with superstar receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson, are widely considered to be the greatest.
An equally compelling case is the 2020 Alabama Crimson Tide led by Mac Jones and Heisman wide receiver DeVonta Smith.
Would the 2025 Hoosiers be in a similar category if they defeat Miami this week?
In terms of sheer NFL talent and roster depth, they still don’t match the SEC’s elite programs. That said, stack them against Georgia’s 2021 or 2022 teams, and the debate is already on the table.
Perhaps not in terms of guys who will excel at the next level, but this Indiana team led by former Nick Saban assistant Curt Cignetti executes at as high a level as any group you could put them up against.
The offense quarterbacked by Fernando Mendoza has not put up the gaudy statistics of those Alabama and LSU teams, but they have made just as few mistakes.
Nobody in the South is going to be making the case for Indiana as the greatest team in the history of the sport, however, if you can’t respect this group as an all-time legendary unit by this point, you simply are not looking hard enough.
