- Pinch yourself, folks, because Indiana is a football powerhouse now.
- Fernando Mendoza dazzles, racking up touchdown passes.
- Curt Cignetti takes Indiana on a two-year tear unlike any we’ve seen before.
ATLANTA – Cinderella’s got a mean right hook, and she’s not real big on showing mercy, either.
So fierce, she’s become, she stopped resembling Cinderella months ago.
Last year’s Indiana Hoosiers were an underdog story.
These Hoosiers are a dadgum heavyweight. They just knocked Oregon out cold.
‘We’re here to dominate,’ Hoosiers defensive lineman Daniel Ndukwe said.
Pinch yourself, folks, because Indiana is a football powerhouse now. What’s next, the sun rising in the west? A blizzard in hell?
Ostensibly, this 56-22 blowout in a College Football Playoff semifinal pitted two of the nation’s best teams against one another. The gap between the No. 1 seed and everybody else looked miles wide for a second straight playoff game.
Good luck, Miami.
Cheer up, Alabama. Oregon looked every bit as overmatched as the Tide did in the Rose Bowl.
Sure, some team perhaps could stop Curt Cignetti’s machine. Some team like 2020 Alabama or 2019 LSU. Teams that aren’t in this playoff bracket.
Indiana football fans storm into Atlanta, celebrate a beatdown
Did the last one out of Indiana remember to turn out the light?
Oregon fans mostly stayed home. Consider it money smartly saved.
A quick glance around Hartsfield-Jackson Airport the day before the game told you this would be akin to a home game for Indiana.
‘Man, they’re doing their part as the 12th man,’ Indiana offensive lineman Carter Smith said. ‘It means the world to me and it means the world to this team.”
In a downtown pub the night before the game, Hoosiers fans watching Miami beat Mississippi kept shouting, “Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoosiers!”
A day later, they were chanting that on repeat as the touchdowns piled up throughout what could go down as the most significant win in program history — for the next 10 days, anyway.
Indiana scored on the first play from scrimmage when D’Angelo Ponds jumped a sideline route, intercepted Dante Moore’s pass and returned his prize for touchdown. The raucous crowd clad in crimson and cream hollered in delight, and a train horn blared inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
That horn blasted inside this domed venue after every score.
By the third quarter, my ears were ringing. The Ducks will hear that horn in their offseason nightmares.
Curt Cignetti keeps historic run with Indiana football rolling
You can’t call this an Indiana revival or resurrection, because this program never truly lived before Cignetti. Not like this. Old-timers can tell you about the 1967 team that reached the Rose Bowl, but that was a short gulp of glory smashed between a bad season and a mediocre one.
This two-year tear came out of nowhere. It’s truly beyond compare. If you peep Indiana’s transfer class, you’ll see Indiana is trending toward becoming a staying power.
So, you say you don’t care for pay-for-play or transfer free agency? Well, all that money and all that freedom of movement leveled the playing field for schools like Indiana. Transfers are littered throughout this Indiana roster.
Donor Mark Cuban attended this Peach Bowl romp, and he must have enjoyed seeing that his money contributed to building a team unlike any Indiana has ever experienced.
‘From the outhouse to the penthouse, baby. That’s the IU Hoosiers,’ Cuban told reporters afterward. ‘We ain’t done yet.”
Fernando Mendoza lights up Oregon
It starts with the quarterback. Third-down maestro Fernando Mendoza kept moving those chains with smooth flicks to his reliable wide receivers. He threw more touchdowns (five) than incompletions (three). The offensive line kept Mendoza protected and the ground game moving. The defensive front persistently harassed Moore. Indiana blocked a punt in the fourth quarter, just for some extra style points.
Total mismatch.
How bad did it get for Oregon? Well, running back Dierre Hill Jr. forced his own quarterback to fumble when he bumped into the football while Moore was preparing to pass, jarring the ball loose. Indiana recovered and scored a few plays later.
A disaster, through and through, for Oregon.
Critics moaned after two Group of Five qualifiers got skunked in the playoff’s first round. Yeah, well, one of the Big Ten’s best just got embarrassed by a conference peer.
Wasn’t too long ago blowouts happened at Indiana’s expense. Now, Cignetti’s team keeps handing them out. This becomes Indiana’s eighth win by at least 24 points against a Power Four opponent this season.
Cignetti watched, hands on hips and with a grim expression on his face, as his team turned a playoff semifinal into a laugher.
As the Indiana coach headed toward the locker room at halftime, he fiddled with his watch. If he’d left then, he could have caught the end of “Sheriff Country.” He stuck around to watch Indiana make a carcass out of another playoff team.
One more to go.
Cinderella’s taken her glass slipper off. She’s beating the competition over the head with it.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
