Legendary

 Go ahead and close your eyes, on this morning after. Close your eyes and see what you will see forever now, see decades distant, see the way you see the puck whickering past Vladimir Myshkin off Mike Eruzione's stick or Kris Bryant scooping and throwing to first to end an interminable rainy night in Cleveland.

Now there's this: Fernando Mendoza diving into the end zone, ball outstretched, body and will at full extension. 

Fernando Mendoza going the last full measure for an Indiana football that went the last full measure itself, and now will be remembered the way America remembers the Miracle on Ice and the Miracle in Wrigleyville, aka the Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in 108 long hot summers.

USA 4, Soviet Union 3 in the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980.

Cubs 8, Indians 7 in Game 7 in 2016.

And now ...

Indiana 27, Miami 21 in the 2026 College Football Playoff national championship.

Maybe there's a better ashes-to-apotheosis tale than what happened last night in Miami, but good luck finding it. The Miracle on Ice? Sure, but Team USA had been there before, back in 1960. The Miracle in Wrigleyville? OK, but the Lovable Losers had won 85 or more games four times in the previous nine seasons, including 97 in 2015. They were one of the richest franchises in baseball, with a genius GM in Theo Epstein.

Indiana, on the other hand, was until this season the losing-est major college football program in the entire history of the sport.

Now the Hoosiers are the first major college football program ever to win 16 games in a season, two years after going 3-9 and finishing dead last in the Big Ten. That was right before Curt Cignetti hit town lugging a steamer trunk of hubris and swagger, and stood 100-plus years of dreary history right on its head.

The Hoosiers went 11-2 and reached the CFP in Coach Cig's first year. Now they're 16-0 and national champs, one end of a thread that stretches back 50 years exactly to Indiana's unbeaten 1976 NCAA basketball champions.

Two teams; 48-0 against the world, between the two of them. Who else can say that?

And, yes, OK, so people will say this only happened because of  NIL and the transfer portal, and that Indiana -- Indiana -- winning the national championship is Exhibit A of  how both have ruined the game. You don't have to build a program anymore; all you have to do is rent a few studs and you, too, can become an InstaChamp.

This of course ignores the fact that Indiana's rent-a-studs are for the most part not really studs but (as Mendoza said) "misfits" who became pieces of a greater whole. There isn't a 5-star player on the roster, and for all the caterwauling about the Hoosiers being a bunch of 24- and 25-year-old professionals beating up on children, the reality is somewhat different.

Mendoza, for instance, is 22, as are star wideouts Elijah Surratt and Omar Cooper Jr., star linebacker Aiden Fisher and the DB who made the game-clinching interception, Jamari Sharpe. Charlie Becker, who made two pressure catches last night to add to his growing list, is a sophomore. Running back Roman Hemby and All-American DB D'Angelo Ponds are both 23.

In other words, most of Indiana's key players are no older than the seniors on any senior-laden team. That those sorts of teams generally fare well in college football is hardly a revelation -- nor a reason to diminish what they accomplish.

So how did we get this place with Indiana?

Same as any program has ever gotten there, from the turn of the last century to today: Hard work, attention to detail, obsessive preparation and the right combination of grit, talent and the willingness of players to buy in as a seamless whole. 

What happened last night wasn't magic, in other words. It wasn't Indiana finding some cheat code or slick shortcut. It was just a superb football team being superb when it needed to be.

It was Mendoza getting roughnecked by the vicious Miami defense and bouncing up, over and over. It was Becker making a huge fourth-down catch because he and Mendoza had practiced it over and over. And it was Mendoza, his passing arm looking as if it had been gnawed by wolves, tucking it and running into the teeth of the Miami D on fourth-and-5.

Not stopping, of course, until he was Wilbur-and-Orville-ing into the end zone on the 12-yard run that will forever make him, and this Indiana team, legendary.

Someday a photo of that wingless flight will hang in an honored place in the Indiana football complex. And the alums will see it the way the Mikes and Sullys in Boston still see Bobby Orr's wingless flight after scoring the Cup-winning goal against the Blues. 

That was the iconic image of the Bruins' glory days. Mendoza's will be the same for these glory days. 

Go ahead and close your eyes, on this morning after. Close your eyes and see what you will see forever now, see for decades distant.

Fernando Mendoza, and Indiana football, in full flight.

And never coming down.