It’s a week now since Indiana completed its indescribably magical football season, but it’s going to take a lot longer than that for a lot of Hoosiers to comprehend what just happened.

“There’s a real chance now to step back and go, ‘That was incredible,’ “ said Mike Gastineau. “I can’t even put it into words, watching it unfold, every step of the way.”

At Indiana, there were a lot of steps. A lot of bleak, and not much sweet. This is a football program that entered the 2025 season as the major-college program that has lost the most.

Bowl success? In an era when failing to get to a bowl is capital malfeasance, Indiana entered 2025 with four bowl victories. Damn near anybody you can name had more than four. Vanderbilt has five. Rice has seven. Oregon State, which still holds the NCAA record for consecutive losing seasons at 28, has 12.

It’s an odd dichotomy at Indiana. It’s one of college basketball’s bluebloods, having won five NCAA championships.

But football. Indiana went from 1995 to 2018 with one winning year. When it broke through for an 8-5 record in 2019, it soiled the season in the Gator Bowl by surrendering two touchdowns in 30 seconds to lose to Tennessee in the waning moments, 23-22.

In the old Pac-12, seven different schools went to the Rose Bowl from 1994-2000. But there’s been a certain stasis over the years in the Big Ten, where Ohio State and Michigan have ruled with an iron fist, peppered occasionally with a Wisconsin or Iowa breakthrough.

But not Indiana.

Gastineau, the reliably reasonable former sports-talk host on KJR in Seattle, and now an author doing free-lance work, went to Indiana from 1978-82, following in the path of his brothers. He actually saw a bit of winning football. Soon it went away.

“I would sit there every week and take my medicine,” he says of the intervening decades. “Either watch them get throttled or invent a new way to blow a two-touchdown lead. A pass over the middle would hit a referee on the shoulder, and the other team not only intercepts it, it goes 78 yards for a touchdown.”

That changed in 2024, when in Curt Cignetti’s first season, the Hoosiers found their way to the 12-team College Football Playoff. At that, they were ranked only 20th in the 2025 preseason, and as an old AP voter, I can tell you that means, “Well, we don’t know what to do with them.”

All that got erased week by week, win by win, until Indiana blew through the playoffs mostly untested until the championship game against Miami. For Indiana’s longtime faithful, a tough game must have been excruciating, the reality that while nobody would have coughed at a 15-1 season, to get this far only to have the title – yes, a title – wrestled away would forever have been piercing.

Then, miraculously, there was nothing left to win.

“In some ways, it was awesome that it went right to the last punch,” said Gastineau, who was in the seats at Hard Rock Stadium with family. "Now I wouldn’t have been sick if we were up by four touchdowns in the fourth quarter. But Miami’s guys were warriors. The first thing I said to my brother was, ‘I’m glad there’s not a fifth quarter. I don’t want to play those guys another 15 minutes.’ “

In my lifetime, the distinction of greatest turnaround in college football is generally accorded Kansas State under Bill Snyder. That was more of a methodical, metamorphosing process that resulted in consistent capability.

It was of a different era. Indiana’s came like a Denver weather change, jarring and unexpected. In the 2024 preseason poll – that’s like 17 months ago – 42 schools got votes in the AP poll, but not Indiana.

Money, of course, played a part. In today’s game, it must. Led by Mark Cuban, donors supported this roster to the tune of the low-20 millions.

“Certainly money was a factor,” Gastineau says. But he adds, “It was a factor for everybody.”

I’m comforted that some old standards still apply. Cignetti’s coordinators have been with him a long time. Familiarity is worth something.

In a world of five-star madness, player evaluation still matters – the ability to envision a player with another 35 pounds on him, the recognition of a guy who just “feels” the game, the ability to sense which prospect likes football and the one who loves it.

Cignetti brought players from James Madison, which normally wouldn’t startle people. But he knew them well, like running back Kaelon Black, who never ran for more than 637 yards at JMU. But, as one of many older heads on the roster, the madcap Black rushed for 1,040 yards in his sixth season.

Maybe the Hoosiers got a little lucky with Fernando Mendoza, the joyous quarterback, whose transfer there from Cal was aided by a brother already on the roster. But not a lot of people in August had him winning the Heisman Trophy.

Meanwhile, after the championship, longtime former CBS Sports columnist Dennis Dodd took on somebody’s notion on X that “the current state of college football is not sustainable.”

“BS,” Dodd responded. “Turns out, the portal and NIL weren’t separators. They leveled the playing field. For decades, what Indiana did was not possible.”

True, to a point. I’m not as sanguine as Dodd when he continued, “As messed up as things are off the field, the game has never been more accessible, enjoyable and fun.”

For some, yes. But how much does Indiana’s breakthrough signal accessibility? Can Arizona and Arizona State manage a $20-million NIL budget? Can Iowa State or Kansas State? Can any number of ACC schools?

In these parts, when Washington State lost a triple-overtime screamer to Washington in the 2002 Apple Cup, it was No. 3-ranked in the country, with a legit chance to play for the national title. Today, its shot at raising a $20-million war chest is next to zero.

Fortunately, Indiana’s rise was accompanied by the same stuff that worked for the best coaches decades ago – keen projection and resourcefulness and coaching and hard work.

It’s doubtful any of that was on the minds of the Gastineau party as it negotiated a shuttle bus and then more miles back to their hotel last week, as closing time neared in the bars.

“You should have heard the cheers in my brother’s car when we heard the bar was open,” Gastineau said.

The beer – for them, Cignetti and all the Hoosiers – never tasted so good.