The stickers are gone now. The College Football Playoff decal that once adorned Aiden Fisher’s helmet? Peeled off. Same with the one on his water bottle. The Cinderella story that captivated college football in 2024 is finished, shelved like a book that brought joy but ended just a page too soon.
What begins now is the sequel.
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Indiana football, once a perennial punchline, turned heads across the country last fall with its first ever trip to the College Football Playoff and an 11-win campaign that rewrote the narrative of the program.
Yet as the Hoosiers prepare for 2025 — amid rising ticket prices, sold-out home games and expectations the program hasn’t seen in generations — don’t expect the mood in Bloomington to be any different.
“Last year, a lot of us went into it with a chip on our shoulder that we do belong,” Fisher, Indiana’s stalwart linebacker and emotional leader, said at Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas. “This year is going to be the same thing, but it’s more about that we can dominate this level. We do belong, and last year wasn’t a fluke or anything like that.”
It’s not that the goal hasn’t shifted. It has. The 2024 campaign was about validation. The 2025 one is about elevation. But internally, the fuel remains the same. Ignore the noise. Trust the process. Go to work.
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“No, it’s the same thing,” Fisher said when asked if the team’s mindset would change. “At the end of the day, the media is going to drive a narrative every single game. It’s always been about us. It’s always going to be about, ‘What can we do better?’”
That has been the defining trait of Curt Cignetti’s Indiana — a ruthless internal standard that isn’t moved by public opinion. While much of the college football world was stunned by last year, the Hoosiers weren’t. They had seen it coming, because they’d built it from the inside out.
“I get questions: ‘How are you going to sustain it?’” Cignetti said. “We’re not looking to sustain it. We’re looking to improve it.
“This is a new year, new team. We’re trying to build a program that year in, year out competes for Big Ten championships, College Football Playoffs and, ultimately, national championships. That’s our vision.”
That pursuit of improvement is where Indiana’s cultural transformation becomes clear. When Cignetti arrived from James Madison, he brought with him not just players, but also purpose. The Hoosiers got better on the field — fast — but the true change happened behind closed doors.
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The results were immediate. The Hoosiers toppled expectations, made history and introduced themselves on college football’s grandest stage. But as Cignetti made clear at Big Ten Media Days, last season wasn’t the summit.
“The theme of the year is humble and hungry versus noise and clutter,” he said. “If you are humble and you are hungry and you have that fire burning inside your belly and you’re committed to high standards … then you’re going to reach your full potential.”
Indiana’s key players haven’t just echoed the sentiment. They’ve embodied it.
Edge rusher Mikail Kamara knows better than most what it feels like to be overlooked. He was a zero-star recruit from Ashburn, Va., who barely made recruiting boards, let alone headlines.
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Now, he’s an All-American with legitimate NFL buzz — buzz he ignored this offseason to return to Bloomington.
“It wasn’t just a one-and-done,” Kamara said when asked how he wants this era of Indiana football to be remembered. “Even if you look at IU’s history, there’s glimpses of good seasons, and it’s followed by two, three, four bad seasons. I want to make sure we’re only going to continue to elevate.”
That chip on Kamara’s shoulder? It hasn’t budged.
“There are certain games on that calendar you have to attack at a different level,” Kamara said. “For me, that’s Oregon and Penn State. They’re circled and starred. It’s on my [phone] wallpaper.”
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This team has learned that belief is not given — it’s earned, and re-earned. And the only way to earn it is by showing up, week after week, with the same hunger that fueled last year’s rise.
While the country marveled at Indiana’s storybook season, the players haven’t forgotten how it ended: with a bitter loss to Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff. It’s the kind of defeat that leaves a scar, the kind that turns celebration into obsession.
“I kind of figured we had a little bit of unfinished business,” Kamara said. “You have to keep working. The days you don’t want to work are the days you really have to do it. Fall in love with the process.”
That process hasn’t changed. Fisher insists the team is even more locked in than it was a year ago.
“You’re going to hear all season long, ‘Can they repeat?’ and ‘Was it a fluke?’ but it’s really all about the people in the building,” Fisher said. “So just keeping that mindset, being locked in, worrying about what we have in the building and eliminating clutter outside of it.”
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That clutter includes praise. While criticism is easy to dismiss, managing success is harder.
That, Cignetti says, is the next step in Indiana’s evolution.
“If you are resting on your laurels and you’ve got the warm fuzzies based on what social media is telling you … and you think that it’s just going to happen again because it happened before, you ain’t going to be a happy camper when the season is over,” he said.
The stadium might be fuller. The stakes might be higher. The cameras might stick around longer. But Indiana football will still be Indiana football — fast, physical, relentless.
Elijah Sarratt, another returning star who passed on the NFL, said it best:
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“You’ve got to play with a chip on your shoulder. If you’re not trying to get better, if you’re not trying to improve, then what are you doing?”
That question echoes through the Indiana locker room. And the answer is always the same: do the work.
For all the noise outside the walls of Memorial Stadium — the doubters, the believers, the hype and the skepticism — the Hoosiers remain quiet in their conviction. Their motivation doesn’t come from polls or pundits. It comes from each other. From what they’ve built. From what they still believe they can be.
In less than a year, Cignetti has changed everything at Indiana. But he’s made sure the most important thing — the mindset of his group — stays exactly the same.
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Humble. Hungry. And far from finished.
About the Author
Zach Browning is a rising senior at Indiana University and is a senior writer for TheHoosier.com, a website powered by the Rivals Network that covers Indiana athletics. Zach also broadcasts Indiana sports for WIUX Sports, Indiana’s student-run radio station, as well as Big Ten Plus, a student-run broadcasting program powered by the Big Ten Network StudentU program.
