Indiana now has most recent undefeated seasons in football and men's basketball
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For generations, Indiana football lived in the eternal shadow of the school’s storied men’s basketball program.
While the Hoosiers were a powerhouse on the hardwood, winning five national championships from 1940-87, they were a laughingstock on the gridiron. Before the 2024 season, they hadn’t finished with more than eight wins in a season since 1967, had only 13 winning seasons since the moon landing, hadn’t won a bowl game since 1991 and had the most all-time losses of any FBS program.
Things have changed, though — to put it mildly.
With a 27-21 victory against No. 10 Miami in the College Football Playoff championship game on Monday, Jan. 19, the Hoosiers finished off an undefeated season and won the program’s first-ever national title. The feat came only two years after Indiana went 3-9 in the 2023 season to cap off a three-year stretch in which it had a combined record of 9-27, leading to the firing of coach Tom Allen and the hiring of Curt Cignetti away from James Madison.
Thanks to the wizardry of Cignetti and his players, Indiana’s now a basketball and a football school — and holds a title that nobody else in college sports can match.
Indiana now has claims to the most recent undefeated seasons in both FBS football and Division I men’s college basketball.
The Hoosiers became the first FBS team to go 16-0 since Yale in 1894, a benchmark that was reached this season with the help of the expanded playoff field, which allows a team to play as many as 16 games a year. The first champion of the 12-team playoff, Ohio State in 2024, lost two regular season games. Since the FBS adopted a four-team playoff ahead of the 2014 season, four teams had finished a season 15-0 — Clemson in 2018, LSU in 2019, Georgia in 2022 and Michigan in 2023.
Indiana’s 1976 national championship team, which will celebrate its 50-year anniversary this March, is the last Division I men’s basketball squad to finish undefeated.
The record has only been occasionally threatened, most recently by Kentucky during the 2014-15 season and Gonzaga during the 2020-21 season. The Wildcats fell to Wisconsin in the Final Four, while the Bulldogs were thumped by Baylor in the national championship game.
Fittingly, both losses occurred in Indianapolis.
The 1976 title was the first of three under coach Bob Knight during his legendary 29-year run at the school.
Moreover, the Hoosiers are just one of two Division I schools that have had championship-winning teams with undefeated final records in both football and men’s basketball. UCLA is the other, with an undefeated national title season in 1954 in football and perfect seasons in men’s basketball in 1964, 1967, 1972 and 1973 that all culminated with NCAA championships.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana is last team with undefeated seasons in football and men's basketball
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