Aiden Fisher on How Indiana Went From 700 Losses to a Title

Indiana University entered this past season as the losingest program in major college football history, with more than 700 defeats. It finished undefeated and holding the College Football Playoff National Championship trophy, the first in the history of Hoosiers football.

Speaking to CBS News' "60 Minutes," former Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher summed up the turnaround in two words: "Coach Cig."

"The people [coach Curt Cignetti] brought in have been phenomenal," Fisher said. "They want to see Indiana as a winning program."

Correspondent Jon Wertheim, who was born and raised in Bloomington, where the university is located, described what the program had been for most of its existence. "For many, many, many years, this was a really lousy football program," he said.

Cignetti built his roster largely through the transfer portal, the database where players make themselves available to other programs, recruiting heavily from schools outside the sport's top ranks. His stated approach was to value "production over potential."

"I think when you see a guy that's been productive for two to three years, it tells you a lot about his discipline, commitment, work ethic, perseverance, ability to stick with things, and stay on the field," the coach told Wertheim. An NCAA rule change means transfers no longer have to sit out a season. "It's basically free agency. And so, you can add and subtract from your roster pretty quickly," Cignetti said.

Fisher was one of those transfers. He was in his second year at James Madison University when Cignetti, then his coach, was hired by Indiana. "All my friends looked at me and they're like, 'You're going to Indiana,'" Fisher said.

He said players passed over by bigger programs carried a particular mindset. "The chip on our shoulder that we weren't wanted... we're never going to face a team that ever recruited me," he said.

Asked whether he had paused to appreciate the run, Fisher said: "The Big Ten Championship is nice, 13-0 feels good. But at the end of the day, it means nothing if we don't finish with holding up the national trophy in the end."

Former quarterback Fernando Mendoza said the campus mood was "electric." In January 2025, he said, "no one would even blink an eye, no one would even know who I was, even if I introduced myself."

Indiana beat the University of Miami 27-21 in January for the title.