Indiana football’s historic season was less about individual moments of brilliance, and more about the collection of many such moments.
IU finished 11-2, after its College Football Playoff loss to Notre Dame. And the disappointment of that performance — and, more broadly, combined with the team’s letdown at Ohio State — may linger for some. But in the big picture, this was the greatest season in program history. These Hoosiers won more games than any other IU team, and it was a product of superb coaching by Curt Cignetti and his staff and a talented group of players that performed greater than the sum of their parts.
Sure, there are plays that will stick out when people look back on this year. The D’Angelo Ponds pick six against Washington; Shawn Asbury II’s long interception return against Nebraska; Elijah Sarratt’s 84-yard touchdown reception in the snow against Purdue; Miles Cross’ clutch one-handed catch against FIU; the defensive stand to secure the win over Michigan. And plenty of others that will trigger fond memories.
But that’s the point — there were so many big moments, impressive plays, and clutch performances this season that it’s hard to pinpoint a lot of specifics. These Hoosiers didn’t rely on a few standout players to carry the team. And they didn’t spend the season squeaking out close wins with memorable game-sealing moments. They didn’t trail in any game for over two months of the season, and when they finally faced their first deficit, they rattled off 47 unanswered points in what wound up being one of their more dominant performances of the year.
The 2024 Indiana Hoosiers, week after week, showed up to the stadium, did their jobs, and just handled their business.
“I’ll remember the fact that — not just the games that we won, but how we won them, how we competed — it was a total team effort. The coaching staff, Coach Cig coming in and the way he just established kind of a new way that the team is going to operate, the priorities of the team,” IU vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics Scott Dolson told The Daily Hoosier. “I think this team will be remembered for decades, for sure.”
Perhaps the more memorable aspect of Indiana’s season will be the way the fans bought into the team.
IU fans delivered a modest turnout to begin the year against FIU, but many fans — particularly the students — left at halftime and never returned, a practice that had become commonplace in Bloomington. Cignetti called it out after that first game, knowing how important fan support was to his rebuild.
The Memorial Stadium environment didn’t immediately improve — the Friday night home game against FCS program Western Illinois didn’t draw a big crowd, and the stands still thinned at halftime. A fraction of those fans remained to see IU score its program-record 77th point in a historic rout.
But things soon began changing, slowly but surely. Indiana raised eyebrows with its statement win at UCLA. Two weeks later, ahead of the team’s Big Ten home opener against Maryland, Cignetti requested student support in an email that said, ‘The tailgates can wait. The parties can wait. If you need to study, that can wait too.’
The student section remained full until the end of the game.
IU’s first bye week, after a road win at Northwestern, divided the first half of the season from the second half. And the second half saw a marked shift in game-day atmospheres in Bloomington. The Hoosiers sold out Memorial Stadium for a lopsided win over Nebraska, with FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff show in town, and with the student section waving ‘Study later’ rally towels in the air all game. Longtime radio voice Don Fischer got goosebumps watching Indiana take the field that day.
The white towels became an instant hit, as IU distributed them to the entire stadium for the last three home games against Washington, Michigan, and Purdue — all also sellouts. The team kept playing well, and the fans responded. Memorial Stadium was louder than ever before.
Few people around the program had ever experienced that type of energy at IU home games. Sixth-year Mike Katic is one of them. The offensive lineman began his IU career on the 2019 and 2020 teams who played in bowl games. But fan excitement never reached this level in 2019 — that team never entered the AP Top 25 — and the 2020 team played in empty stadiums during the COVID-19 Pandemic. IU sold out the stadium for the Cincinnati game in 2021, but that was different. That team spent the season undoing all goodwill earned over the previous two years. The 2024 group felt like the start of something.
“I think fans and everyone should see what we did this year. We changed the trajectory of Indiana football. We changed the way people think about Indiana football,” Katic said after the Notre Dame game. “And I’m just so happy that I could have been a part of it.”
The historic season created stars all around the field. Some will spend just this one season with the Hoosiers, like Justice Ellison, Myles Price, Zach Horton, and Kurtis Rourke — who finished in the top 10 in Heisman Trophy voting. But they’ve still created legacies with this team that will carry on in Bloomington.
Others, like Ponds, Carter Smith, Aiden Fisher, and Mikail Kamara, are set to return as true faces of the team next year and beyond.
All played big roles in turning Indiana football into a winning program.
“I think I’ll look back and just remember how much they’ve changed things. And, again, this is coming from a guy that was here before. I was in those locker rooms. I was at Indiana. I know what it meant to be an Indiana football player in 2012,” defensive coordinator Bryant Haines said after the Notre Dame game. “It’s a different era now, and these guys changed it forever.”
The way Indiana follows this successful campaign will define part of this team’s legacy. If Cignetti capitalizes on the momentum from this strong first season and IU continues delivering successful seasons, this year’s squad would go down as the group that laid the groundwork for a potential golden era for the program. But if the Hoosiers regress in the coming years, and 2024 proves to be an outlier instead of the standard for Cignetti’s teams, this season would be remembered more like Indiana’s 2019 and 2020 teams.
The ensuing drop-off for Tom Allen’s squads in following years doesn’t make those back-to-back bowl teams any less memorable — Michael Penix Jr.’s game-winning two-point conversion against Penn State will live on in Hoosier lore for a long time. But IU fans hoped those successful seasons would mark the beginning of an extended successful run; instead, those groups were just fun blips on the ongoing Indiana timeline.
Regardless of what the future holds, the 2024 Hoosiers will be a fond memory for fans who never dreamt they could achieve this level of success. Even some of the most optimistic Indiana fans couldn’t have predicted a College Football Playoff berth in Cignetti’s first season.
But IU is already putting the pieces in place to keep things rolling into 2025. If that happens, this 2024 season could prove to be not only the most significant football season in Indiana history, but one of the most significant individual seasons for any IU sport, ever.
“You look at the track that Indiana football was on previously before we got here. Then you look now, it’s kind of a full 180,” Fisher said after the Notre Dame game. “I think we’ve laid a foundation of what Indiana football can be and what it is now, and I expect to be right back here (in the College Football Playoff) next year.”
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