Hartsock

Notes and observations leading up to Monday’s NCAA football championship game:

Pat Fellinger would have been beaming.

The 1952 graduate of Altoona Catholic High School, who went on to be a three-year college football starter at end for the Indiana Hoosiers from the 1953 through 1955 seasons, was a posthumous inductee into the Blair County Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.

Fellinger passed away at the age of 52 in 1987 from a sudden heart attack caused by arterial sclerosis.

Had he lived to see this moment, Fellinger would no doubt be thoroughly thrilled about what this year’s Indiana football program has accomplished for his alma mater in this magical season.

The top seed in this year’s College Football Playoff field, Indiana boasts a 15-0 season record and has an opportunity to win the program’s first-ever national football championship ever on Monday night, when the Hoosiers face the 10th-seeded Miami Hurricanes at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.

One of the most intriguing and exciting things about sports in general is when the underdog rises from the mat and decks the favorite.

But for what has literally been almost forever, Indiana University football had been an afterthought.

Since the program began way back in 1887, all the way to the beginning of this season, the Hoosiers had won only one outright Big Ten Conference championship, in 1945, and shared another, in 1967 — when they earned, what prior to this season, had been their first and only berth in the Rose Bowl.

That was before a dour but incredibly confident, focused and meticulous head coach who leaves no stone unturned arrived in Bloomington in 2024, and the Hoosiers’ world completely changed for the better.

After logging what was then a program-best 11-2 record in head coach Curt Cignetti’s first season as its coach in 2024, and reaching the College Football Playoffs — albeit losing there in the first round to Notre Dame — Indiana has forged a season for the record books that has extended into the biggest game of the year in early 2026.

Led by Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza and a bevy of other outstanding skill players who, like Mendoza, came to Indiana via the transfer portal, Indiana has reeled off a perfect record through 15 games that has prompted the oddsmakers to install the Hoosiers as 8½ point favorites over the 10th-seeded Hurricanes in the championship game.

And older college football fans who thought for many decades that Indiana, which had been forever known for its men’s basketball program, would never sniff a college football championship in their lifetimes, are now on the threshold of seeing that happen.

The signs of a special, otherworldly season have been there all along for the Hoosiers. But it’s Indiana football after all, and who would have believed that the ultimate prize would actually come to fruition for the Hoosiers?

There was the total dismantling of a good visiting Illinois team in September, and the last-minute victory at Penn State in November in which Mendoza and the Hoosiers orchestrated a magical final drive down the field capped off by Mendoza threading the needle with an unbelievably well-thrown pass to wideout Omar Cooper — whose leaping catch in the back of the end zone was exceeded in its brilliance only by his toe-tapping ability to stay in bounds.

Those are the types of plays that bookmark unbeaten, championship seasons, and render teams to be regarded as teams of destiny.

Then came the Hoosiers’ 13-10 Big Ten Conference upset of favored Ohio State — considered all season as the nation’s top team — at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, in which Indiana proved that it can win equally with its defense as well as with its offense.

The College Football Playoffs have been something else for Indiana, which drew a first-round bye as the top seed in the tournament and secured a spot in only the second Rose Bowl appearance in program history this past New Year’s Day.

The Hoosiers racked up 407 yards in total offense and held Alabama to a lone field goal en route to a resounding 38-3 quarterfinal-round victory.

Any doubters that remained following that game disappeared into the woodwork the following week. That’s when Indiana, led by Mendoza’s five touchdown passes in the national semifinal-round Peach Bowl game, built a 35-7 halftime lead that served as a springboard to a resounding 56-22 rout of a very good fifth-seeded Oregon team that had entered this season as a national title contender.

Indiana football has officially arrived, and the Hoosiers are a juggernaut. They’re moving through the playoffs with the jaw-dropping, awe-inducing speed of a runaway freight train, and led by Cignetti — a western Pennsylvania native who started his head football college coaching career with the NCAA Division II program at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania from the 2011 to 2016 seasons — the Hoosiers have only one box remaining to be checked.

Cignetti, who is known for his unwavering intensity throughout all 60 minutes of a football game, regardless of the numbers on the scoreboard, will certainly bring that mentality to Monday’s title game as the Hoosiers attempt to put the finishing touches on their historic season.

N The enormous success experienced by the Hoosiers over the past two seasons, along with the very substantial donation of Name Image and Likeness (NIL) money for the Hoosiers’ football program by billionaire Indiana University alum Mark Cuban, has helped render Indiana as one of the top transfer portal destinations in the country for college football players who are looking for what they believe are better opportunities.

Already this offseason, the Hoosiers have procured former TCU quarterback Josh Hoover, former Michigan State wideout Nick Marsh, and former Kansas State edge rusher Tobi Osunami from the transfer portal.

n Miami has silenced all of its doubters by its impressive performance in the CFP to date. After opening the tournament with a 10-3 victory over seventh-seeded Texas A&M in one of college football’s toughest road venues, the Hurricanes celebrated New Year’s Eve in outstanding fashion in the Cotton Bowl by ousting second-seeded Ohio State, 24-14.

Next on the agenda for Miami was a thrilling 31-27 win over sixth-seeded Ole Miss in the Fiesta Bowl Jan. 8 in which the Canes senior quarterback Carson Beck — a Georgia transfer — scrambled 3 yards for the game-winning touchdown with 18 seconds remaining to allow the Canes to punch their first ticket into the national championship game since 2001.

After a non-descript regular season in which Miami lost at home to Louisville and to SMU on the road in overtime, the Canes failed to even reach the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, let alone win it. That caused plenty of public clamoring for Miami to wind up on the outside looking in when the CFP field was officially announced on Selection Sunday, Dec. 7.

But, despite the fact that neither team played on conference championship weekend, the Canes managed to leap frog Notre Dame in the rankings and secure the playoff berth — a decision that was largely based on Miami’s regular season-opening victory over the Fighting Irish.

n In the midst of an in-house crisis after the fall from grace and dismissal of former head coach Sherrone Moore, Michigan made a home-run coaching hire in the appointment of Kyle Wittingham.

In 21 seasons as the head coach at Utah, Wittingham compiled a 177-88 overall record and led the Utes to a pair of PAC-12 championships and one Mountain West Conference title.

Selected as Coach of the Year in both the PAC-12 and Mountain West, the 66-year-old Wittingham will bring needed stability to a Michigan football program that has been riddled by coaching scandals over the past several years, including Moore’s troubles and the preceding sign-stealing debacle that brought former Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh — who later left for the NFL — and the program under NCAA scrutiny.

In a positive sidelight surrounding the Wittingham hire, Hollidaysburg High School alumnus Garrett Clawson will be retained as the Wolverines assistant special teams coach and will enter his third season on the Michigan coaching staff next fall.

John Hartsock can be reached at jhartsock@altoonamirror.com.