SOUTH BEND and BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- In the main thoroughfare area of the Indianapolis airport, there is a large sign reminding travelers in all caps:
"IN 49 STATES IT'S JUST BASKETBALL, BUT THIS IS INDIANA."
And yet ...
The state that recently hosted the men's Final Four and prides itself on its rich basketball history and tradition feels a little ... different these days. The IU men's basketball team missed the NCAA tournament for the third straight season and has advanced past the first round just once in a decade. The Notre Dame men's basketball team didn't even qualify for the ACC tournament after winning just four games in conference play.
But as you exit toward baggage claim, there's a can't-miss, floor-to-ceiling advertisement for Indiana football, with the IU logo and a NATIONAL CHAMPIONS sign next to a picture of receiver Charlie Becker and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza, their hands locked in a celebration.
"Nowadays you've got to be good in football," Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said. "I'd like to think we're a football state now."
There's certainly evidence of it in a three-hour radius of Indianapolis, as both the Hoosiers and Notre Dame have become an unlikely duo of blue blood and new blood with a common goal of competing for the national title (again) this fall. Their head coaches have starkly different personalities (one is modeling Louis Vuitton Men's in the most recent Esquire magazine, the other is covering what not to wear -- gold cleats -- at practice). They have different recruiting strategies (Indiana recruits a four-hour radius; Notre Dame recruits nationally). Indiana has one national title in football; Notre Dame has 11.
But both are national contenders for the foreseeable future.
The Irish won 10 straight games last year to rebound from an 0-2 start but missed the 12-team College Football Playoff a year after playing for the national title. Indiana, which lost to Notre Dame in the first round of the 2024 CFP, won the school's first national title in football -- fittingly 50 years after former IU basketball coach Bob Knight went 32-0 to win it all.
"Sometimes you've got to sit back and think what Cignetti did," Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. "I mean, it's absolutely amazing ... and they did it at Indiana, which many people didn't view as a football school until the last two years. I think it's awesome, I do. It's awesome for college football as a fan -- not as the head coach of Notre Dame. More teams can win it than you probably think going into a season."
ESPN visited both campuses this spring to better understand what they're doing to be one of those teams this fall.
WHEN CIGNETTI MOVED into his office in 2024, the priority was finding the right spot for his film projector. He wanted the screen to drop down smack in front of his face right over his desk, but some staff members politely pointed out it would block his stunning view of the Memorial Stadium field and the daylight that came with it.
So the projector was installed in the ceiling to the left of his desk, and the screen takes up most of the wall next to his door.
On this particular April day, the image frozen on the screen was the scoreboard at Mercedes-Benz Stadium with 11:41 left in the fourth quarter of the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl: IU 42, Oregon 15. The Hoosiers had the ball on the 3-yard line at third-and-3.
"He's always watching film," redshirt senior left tackle Carter Smith said. "He's always dissecting the next game plan. He's fanatical about it."
As one of the many disciples of former Alabama coach Nick Saban, Cignetti is as process-driven as they come. His father, Frank Cignetti, hired Saban while Frank was head coach at West Virginia. Saban then hired the younger Cignetti as his wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator during his first season at Alabama. Cignetti helped lure in the nation's No. 1 recruiting class in 2008 and the Crimson Tide went 12-2, followed by an undefeated national championship season in 2009.
Sound familiar?
"We've got a way of doing things," Cignetti said. "How you do something is how you do everything. Consistency, performance is the key to the drill. So right now we're teaching guys not only scheme, but standards, expectations, and how we want to play the game between the white lines, and I see us making progress."
With nearly 40 freshmen and transfers, these Hoosiers look significantly different from the group that went 16-0, but winning the national championship hasn't changed anything about Cignetti's blueprint. It only codified it. Practices are short and efficient -- usually about 90 minutes, never longer than two hours -- and are still run without music and without a clock. There's no need for the players to know how much time is left in each period -- it's in Cignetti's head -- and he doesn't want them determining their effort based on how much time might be left.
"For Cig, everything has to be the exact same," Becker said. "I don't think he's gotten a different Chipotle order since he's been here. It's unbelievable. Like, it's the same thing every single day. He gets here before everybody and leaves after everybody. He watches so much film. He has his schedule and that's the way it's going to go no matter what happens."
"No matter what," running back Khobie Martin chipped in.
The process is so ingrained into his players' heads that even after beating Miami to win the national championship, they were all ready to play the next opponent.
"It was almost weird after the national championship," linebacker Isaiah Jones said. "Like, what's next? We don't know what to do now. There's no one else. We've got a team that's so eager to get onto the next opponent and not just linger on past victories."
The next opponent is now Sept. 5 against North Texas. The defending national champions open with four straight home games, and the only Power 4 opponent is Sept. 26 against Northwestern. On paper, the Hoosiers should be undefeated heading into their Oct. 17 home game against Ohio State.
Not that anyone is looking ahead.
"I can tell you guys in our locker room aren't thinking about winning a national championship," Jones said. "We're thinking about winning the day, stacking three practices this week ... we can't be looking all the way to Jan. 27 now. It's tonight. What can I do tonight? Heal my body. Rest. Hydrate. Friday film. Keep stacking days like that."
Cignetti told both of his bosses -- athletic director Scott Dolson and IU president Pamela Whitten -- to turn down all external requests and speaking engagements so he could continue to focus on football.
"I'm 95% football," Cignetti said. "We've said no to everything except for the Indy 500."
(Cignetti, who will drive the honorary pace car for the 110th Indianapolis 500, is doing a test drive on April 30.)
"I've got to be able to do my job," he said. "These things pull you out of the office and they take up your time. I mean, I have a job to do. Believe it or not, I'm busy."
Back to the projector.
Film study is how Cignetti said he zeroed in on TCU transfer quarterback Josh Hoover. Cignetti had 18 days before IU played Alabama, which gave him a window to evaluate transfer portal quarterbacks. Cignetti said he spent a lot of time looking at "four or five of them."
"He's got to have arm talent," Cignetti said. "He's got to be able to process quickly. He's got to be accurate, he's got to be able to extend plays, make plays, be a good decision-maker."
Hoover threw 13 interceptions in 12 games last year, the most in the Big 12, and he threw multiple picks in five separate games -- all "facts right now," Cignetti said. But TCU's offense is different, throwing the ball about 60% of the time.
"They're basically trying to outscore people," said Cignetti, who is 27-2 in his two seasons at IU. "He's throwing the ball a lot more. When you do that, you're putting more pressure on your quarterback. Even last year with Fernando, at the end of the day we were 60% run, 40% pass, and there's been years with an even higher run. That takes a lot of pressure off the quarterback. ... There'll be less pressure on him to carry the load, which should create more advantageous passing situations."
Indiana got Hoover -- and never trailed against Alabama, Oregon or Miami en route to one of the greatest seasons in college football history. Remember, this was college football's all-time losingest program. A school that accidentally misspelled its own name on a jersey in 2021: I-N-D-I-N-I-A.
"I know these last two years have been eye-opening to this state and then the whole country," Jones said. "It's kind of weird to hear Indiana and national championship in the same sentence, but I think that's everyone outside of the building. Everyone on the inside, we all have the same goal in mind. We don't put limits on ourselves."
WHILE CIGNETTI HAS challenged his players to quickly move on from the greatest season in school history, Notre Dame's Freeman wants to make sure his players are "keeping the pain" from 2025.
They've had some extra time to think about it.
Because Notre Dame missed the playoff and opted out of a bowl game, the team had eight full weeks of winter conditioning. In a team meeting this offseason, he showed his players the video of their reactions on Selection Day so they would remember that emotion.
"I think if you asked anybody in the building they would say that was a shocking experience," quarterback CJ Carr said. "You go back and you watch the emotion, and the draining feeling that you know you felt in those seats with your teammates, and you're expecting great news -- expecting to go and do some damage in the playoffs. I thought we were playing our best football at that time, and it doesn't go the way you want. So the only thing you can do is respond.
"You can sulk and you can point the finger, or you can say, 'Alright, we got punched in the face. We got to get back up. We got to go back to work. We've got a new team coming in. We're gonna be really good. We've got draft picks all over the field. We've got a chance to be really special.'"
Carr, who completed 67% of his passes last year for 24 touchdowns and six interceptions, is returning for his second season as full-time starter under offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock. Former Ohio State receiver Quincy Porter, who was the No. 9 receiver in the 2025 high school class, could emerge as a dependable target for Carr. The defense returns nine of its top 10 tacklers from a year ago in their second season under defensive coordinator Chris Ash. The staff took seven total players from the transfer portal, and three of them were defensive linemen. They succeeded in beefing up with both size and experience. The continuity on both sides, plus the integration of a top-20 transfer portal class, gives Notre Dame the talent and experience it needs to make another run at the 12-team field.
"I'm confident in the people in this program," Freeman said. "I'm confident in the coaches, I'm confident in the staff that we've put together here, but ... we've got to focus on reaching our full potential, because if we don't, then we don't even need to think about the playoffs or the national championship."
There are only nine seniors on Notre Dame's roster, but there are 23 juniors and a total of 71 returning players. No team in the country returns more production than Notre Dame, according to ESPN's Bill Connelly. The Irish return 72% overall and are No. 2 in the country in defensive returning production (77%).
"The linebackers, all four of us came back," said senior team captain Drayk Bowen, who led the Irish with 67 tackles last year. "All the DBs came back. What we did last year, with our rush yards per game and how many picks we had, I think we could just keep building on that. ... It's just a bunch of guys in Year 2 of a defense we really understand, we know how to communicate with each other because we've done it for four years. We're experienced, so I think we could really be the head of this team and be the spark every game that this team will need."
This season, a new six-year contract begins between the CFP and ESPN, and a rule agreed upon by the FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua protects Notre Dame with a guaranteed playoff bid -- as long as the Irish finish in the selection committee's top 12 on Selection Day. The independent Irish don't have a conference championship game, so their 12-game résumé will continue to make or break their playoff hopes. The rivalry series with USC has ended (at least until further notice), so Notre Dame's best opportunities to impress the committee will be Oct. 17 at BYU and at home on Nov. 7 against Miami.
"We can't lose two games," junior cornerback Leonard Moore said. "We can't. We can't leave that doubt, and we can't leave it up to the judges. We can't leave it up to the committee. We've got to pretty much put ourselves in."
Moore, a native of Austin, Texas, whose father is a history professor at UT, grew up in a state that is "all football."
Indiana is no Texas -- you can still find a hoop in nearly every driveway -- but now you can also find the CFP National Championship and Heisman trophies in Bloomington.
"Previously you had just Notre Dame in the mix, and Indiana and Purdue off to the side, but now that Indiana is sitting at the top -- which is just crazy to think about, something you would never expect -- it's just bringing a lot of juice and that much more energy to the state," Moore said. "That's good. Just bring it. Hopefully we see them again in the playoffs."