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01/20 07:12 CST Indiana completes undefeated season and wins first national
title, beating Miami 27-21 in CFP final
Indiana completes undefeated season and wins first national title, beating
Miami 27-21 in CFP final
By EDDIE PELLS
AP National Writer
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) --- 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 --- maybe impossible? --- 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.
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-4 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."
Mendoza's TD gave Indiana a 24-14 lead --- barely enough breathing room to hold
off a frenzied charge by the hard-hitting Hurricanes --- a team that barely
made the College Football Playoff and barely showed up in the first half of the
final before coming to life behind 112 yards and two scores from Mark Fletcher.
"They're the best thing that happened to the University of Miami in 25 years,"
said coach Mario Cristobal, who was part of the title run that put this
colorful program on the map in the 1980s and '90s.
The CFP trophy now heads to the most unlikely of places: Bloomington, Indiana
--- home of the college that famously boasts the most living alumni (805,000),
including billionaire Mark Cuban and several thousand of his closest friends
who packed Miami's home stadium and turned a title-game ticket into a
$4,000-or-more splurge.
"It's way up there, that's for damn sure," Cuban said when asked where this
ranked among the out-of-nowhere success stories he helped bankroll on his
reality show "Shark Tank."
Indiana finished 16-0 --- using the extra games afforded by the expanded
12-team playoff to match a perfect-season win total last compiled by Yale in
1894. President Donald Trump was in the stands for what he said "turned out to
be a great game" after a slow start --- Indiana led 10-0 at half.
In a fitting bit of symmetry, this undefeated title comes 50 years after Bob
Knight's basketball team went 32-0 to win it all in that state's favorite sport.
That hasn't happened since, and there's already some thought that college
football --- in its evolving, money-soaked, name-image-likeness era --- might
not see a team like this again, either.
Players like Mendoza --- a transfer from Cal who grew up just a few miles away
from Miami's campus, "The U" --- certainly don't come around often.
Two fourth-down gambles by Cignetti in the fourth quarter, after Fletcher's
second touchdown carved the Hurricanes' deficit to 17-14, put the QB in
position to shine.
The first was a 19-yard-completion to Charlie Becker on a back-shoulder fade
those guys have been perfecting all season. Four plays later came a decision
and play that wins championships.
Cignetti sent his kicker out on fourth-and-4 from the 12, but quickly called
his second timeout. The team huddled on the field and the coach drew up a
quarterback draw, hoping the Hurricanes would be in a defense they had shown
before.
"We rolled the dice and said, ?They're going to be in it again and they were,'"
Cignetti said. "We blocked it well, he broke a tackle or two and got in the end
zone."
Mendoza's play could very well join John Elway's "helicopter" run in Super Bowl
32 as one of the greatest examples of a quarterback willing to put everything
on the line to win it all. Mendoza might soon have something else in common
with Elway: This game did little to diminish his projection as the first pick
in the upcoming NFL draft.
"Everyone on the team, including my coach, makes fun of my running style,"
Mendoza said. "But it's fourth down, so you've got to put it all on the line.
Every player, if they had that opportunity, they'd put their body on the line,
too."
For Miami, it was a very close call.
A team listed 18th in the first CFP rankings moved to 10th and sneaked into the
playoff, bringing as many questions about the process as the selection itself.
The Hurricanes proved they belonged all the way. Fletcher was a one-man force,
hitting triple digits for the third time in four playoff games and turning a
moribund offense into something much more.
His first touchdown run was a 57-yard burst through the right side that pulled
Miami within 10-7 early in the third quarter.
But after Miami got the ball back and stalled deep in its own territory,
Hoosiers lineman Mikail Kamara slid past the 'Canes' punt protectors and
blocked the kick. The ball ended up in the end zone and Isaiah Jones recovered
to make it 17-7. Miami was in comeback mode the rest of the way.
It ended as a one-score game, and the 'Canes --- the visiting team playing on
their home field --- moved into Indiana territory before Carson Beck's heave
got picked off by Jamari Sharpe, a Miami native who made sure the only miracle
in this season would be Indiana's.
How big a miracle?
This was a program that was so bad that coach Lee Corso stopped a game in 1976
to take a picture of a scoreboard when it read "Indiana 7, Ohio State 6."
Indiana lost 47-7.
There were hundreds of losses in front of half-empty stadiums between then and
now.
But those days are over. The Hoosiers --- yes, the Hoosiers --- are national
champions.
"I know nobody thought it was possible," Cignetti said. "It probably is one of
the greatest sports stories of all time."
___
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