The End of the Underdog in College Football
The Indiana Hoosiers will take the field for college football’s National Championship game Monday night as the darlings of the sports world. Their head coach, Curt Cignetti, perpetually scowling beneath his 1950s crew cut, is fuel for countless memes. Their Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, baby-faced and giving “glory to God” in his postgame interviews, is a midwestern star straight out of central casting—nevermind that he’s from Miami, the hometown of his Monday-night rivals. These two men, along with a team that Mendoza has described as “a bunch of misfits,” have led the long-hapless Hoosiers to the cusp of a national title for the first time ever. Win or lose, they’re being called one of the greatest underdog stories in recent sports history.
