Prior to the triumph of the #1 Indiana Hoosiers last night in Miami, only one major college football team, the 1894 Yale Bulldogs, had finished a 16-0 season. As The Simpsons supervillain, C. Montgomery Burns is Yale class of 1914, perhaps he has an awareness of that famed team that came around 20 years before he graduated.
To quote Mr. Burns, on his way home from Harvard-Yale “The Game” in 1997:
“Well, I say let Harvard have their football and their academics, Yale will always be first in gentlemanly club life. Why every friend I have in the world, I owe to this place!”
Yale’s glory days are long over, but every college football fan should see the Yale Bowl (while its still standing), if given the chance.
Today belongs to the Indiana Hoosiers, who became the first (FBS) team in the modern era to go 16-0, when they beat Miami 27-24 in their own building for the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday night.
They also outnumbered the Hurricanes in fan support, decisively, despite the neutral site contest ending up at the home venue of the Canes.
IU was literally a 100-1 long shot in the preseason, but now they have completed the journey and won it all. And this completes the greatest turnaround, of any program, in any sport. And in lauding Indiana, we also have to shout out James Madison.
When Curt Cignetti left James Madison for Indiana, he brought a whole host of players with him.
Seven of them won a natty on Monday night:
D’Angelo Ponds CB, Solomon Vanhorse RB, Tyrique Tucker OT, Elijah “Waffle House” Sarratt WR, Kaelon Black RB, Aiden Fisher LB and Mikail Kamara DL.
And Although what IU has done is outstandingly elite, it is still far from unprecedented.
Look no further than 2016.
In May of that year, Leicester City, a football club that had only been promoted to the Premier League just a couple seasons prior, overcame 5,000-1 odds to win the Premier League title.
Then in November, the Chicago Cubs ended the most infamous championship drought in all of sports, the 108 year run without a World Series title finally ended.
However, every dominant team is especially dominant, in their own way.
Yale’s historic season involved shutting out 13 of 16 foes. Meanwhile North Dakota State went 16-0 at the FCS level in 2019.
As for the Indiana Hoosiers, their 16-0 season is only thanks to the expanded 12-team CFP. So now Indiana University boasts the most recent undefeated national champion in both revenue sports, and men’s basketball went 32-0 in 1975-76.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, RG.org and Ratings.org. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Washington Post.