You are a supporter of the University of Miami, and that taste of fireplace ash that coats your mouth has not yet gone away. You spent what could have been one of the best nights of your life watching your Cinderella get her arse kicked by a better Cinderella, which in and of itself is a odd enough notion, and now the rest of the nation is doing the bragging-rights slide all over your living room floor. Not even the knowledge that your loyalty wager, Hurricanes plus 7.5, came in is of any solace, for it will be the saddest money you'll ever make. You can't even hate the other guy's quarterback because he is not only aggressively virtuous but also one of you. A one-score defeat has never felt more one-sided.
But there is always the blessing of schadenfreude, of finding a way to define Indiana in victory that can only be truly enjoyed if your are of sufficiently small mind and dark heart, and right now you're in no position to turn down any crumb of solace, even if it still has that sooty aftertaste. You woke up today knowing, absolutely knowing, that this is the best moment Indiana football will ever have, and that everything after this is anticlimactic, maybe even disappointing. There is no better feeling in the world than victory without the burden of expectations, even if you were the pregame favorite, and Indiana's climb from Indianahood is so spectacularly improbable and free of historical context that it can never be topped.
Everything they do from this moment will be measured against last night and be found wanting, because you can only be perfect after a century of nothing the one time. The 1969 New York Mets are still the best thing to ever happen to the Mets whether you were alive for it or not, and no, you may not use the "Well, I wasn't born in 1969" argument to make yourself feel better. The 1981 San Francisco 49ers who went from 2-14 to 6-10 to the Super Bowl are still the warmest memory that franchise has ever emitted. The 2016 Leicester City victory in the Premier League as a 5,000-1 shot is light years better than anything before or since. History does not give a salamander's damn about your birthdate, because it was going on before you showed up and will go on after you're stiff, unless of course Satan's emissary manages to irradiate the planet over fucking Greenland and takes us all out. There's only one first time, and get your mind out of the gutter, you creep.
Thus, Indiana's 27-21 victory last night can only be truly enjoyed for everything it was not, which was the rest of Indiana's football history. Even the Hoosiers' 2024 season in which they went 11-2, racking up double-digit wins for the first time ever, will not be remembered because it wasn't this. Nothing is this. In short everything good about Indiana football just happened—Mikail Kamara's blocked punt, Fernando Mendoza's legendary touchdown, Jamari Sharpe's game-sealing interception, all of it. It all puts the 1991 Weiser Lock Copper Bowl to shame.
But you, the Miami fan, know every one of those daggers because they are still vibrating in your thigh, and you're looking for comfort in hell. Your team was as good as it has been in decades and you still got chumped by an indisputably better team, so what you want to know is not next year's prospectus but how to get through Wednesday without morning drinking.
Well, like we said, schadenfreude. Indiana football will never be better than it is right now, and Indiana fans know that even in the afterglow. If the Hoosiers slap the sport next year, it still won't be as good. There will be no play more cathartic for the masochistic Hoosier fan than Mendoza's 12-yard touchdown on fourth-and-4. There will be no bragging rights that emanate quite like these.
In other words, it's all anticlimax from here. Curt Cignetti, the international rights holder for the word "dour," can only be known after this for A) what his next job is going to be, or B) when he will be fired. His transit gloria is about to be very sic indeed, because that is the way of all coaches in all sports. The expectations he never had to meet when he took the Indiana job, or when he was at James Madison, Elon, or Indiana of Pennsylvania are now his morning coffee, because once you've done perfect, woe betide you for not doing it again. He once was blissfully alone, and now he has six million assistant athletic directors he's never met demanding to know what's next. They can't help it. It's how they were raised. It's how we were all raised.
In fact, for some, anticlimax is only the start of it. Mendoza knew when football came without demands, at Cal and then at Indiana, but now is about to become a Las Vegas Raider, home of Cerberus's last litter of hell-puppies. A well-paid, much publicized, desperately needed and much scrutinized Las Vegas Raider, sure, but a Las Vegas Raider nonetheless, with all the torment that implies. There are no words we can offer as forewarning except Geno Smith, Kenny Pickett, Gardner Minshew, Aidan O'Connell, Desmond Ridder, Derek Carr, Brian Hoyer, Jimmy Garoppolo, Jarrett Stidham (JARRETT STIDHAM!), Nathan Peterman, Marcus Mariota, Mike Glennon, A.J. McCarron, EJ Manuel, Terrelle Pryor, Connor Cook, Matt Schaub, Matt Flynn, Matt McGloin, Matt Leinart, Carson Palmer, Jason Campbell, J.P. Losman, Kyle Boller, Jamarcus Russell, Charlie Frye, Daunte Culpepper, Bruce Gradkowski, Josh McCown, Andrew Walter, Aaron Brooks, Marques Tuiasosopo, Kerry Collins and Rick Mirer, just to name the quarterbacks since their last Super Bowl appearance. Put it another way, Mendoza's faith is about to be put to the lash, and his cheery and generous demeanor is about to run into, "Yeah, and you still lost to the Chargers, so where was your religion then?"
It's different for them all, because adulthood isn't about seasons like this. Life does not go 16-0 and winning the national title on the other guy's ground. For all the Hoosiers and their newfound army of self-satisfied supporters, this is their Citizen Kane, and everything after this is their Magnificent Ambersons. Nothing wrong with that, in honesty; The Magnificent Ambersons was a fine film by any measure, but you had to IMDb The Magnificent Ambersons, and you're a movie nerd.
And you know what—the slow glide back to college football normalcy that comes next, well, it was still worth it for them to have this. They don't get to be long-suffering any more, if that was a title anyone willingly clings to, and their next 3-9 season, whenever it comes and under whatever coach, will come with one indisputable truth. From this moment forward, they'll be just like everybody else, but this moment was worth it all, before and after. Well, except maybe the Raiders thing.
