Why Mark Cuban Might Be the Real MVP of Indiana’s National Championship

Cases can be made for any variety of figures as Most Valuable Player of Indiana’s 27-21 National Championship Game win over Miami: Fernando Mendoza, who overcame a pedestrian overall performance with gutsy fourth-down plays down the stretch; Mikail Kamara with his pivotal punt-block for a touchdown; perhaps the entire Hoosiers secondary, which shined all night and came up with the decisive play, Jamari Sharpe’s interception of Carson Beck.

Another candidate?

Billionaire Mark Cuban, whose contributions to Indiana football helped transform the long-moribund program into an undefeated powerhouse.

The ESPN broadcast of the College Football Playoff finale repeated cut to the mogul reacting during Monday’s instant classic. With the championship emanating from Miami, Cuban’s presence brought to mine a Tony Montana quote: “I’ve gotta look after my investment!”

Miami was also home to Cuban’s crowning achievement as an NBA franchise owner, with the Dallas Mavericks wrapping up the 2011 Finals in Game 6 to temporarily deny LeBron James his first championship.

As stacked as that Heat team was, with the future Hall of Famer James joining 2021 and 2023 inductees Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, this championship was the more improbable of the titles Cuban-affiliated teams have claimed.

Indiana football’s futility for decades predating the 2024 season lingered as a requisite footnote attached to all of the Hoosiers’ success. Even after completing their unbeaten march to the national championship, coach Curt Cignetti alluded to the historic lack of success in his postgame interview with ESPN.

“We won the national championship at Indiana University. It can be done!” the typically stone-faced Cignetti said while flashing a rare smile.

Indeed it can, but it is in a much different landscape than that which Cignetti’s Hoosiers predecessors like Lee Corso and Bill Mallory occupied.

When the late “Coach Hep,” Terry Hoeppner, was first introduced as Indiana head coach 21 years ago, he stood at a podium with a rose displayed on it to signal his intent to get the Hoosiers to the Granddaddy of ‘Em All. It was a goal that, in 2005, was treated as downright Quixotic.

Hep’s hope for the Hoosiers came true with this year’s run, a Rose Bowl blowout of Alabama kicking off Indiana’s Playoff run. All it took was seismic shifts to the very identity of college athletics in ways that allowed for an alum like Indiana’s Cuban to make an impact.

That hardly discredits all this Indiana program has accomplished in a short time. The Hoosiers are working within the same framework as the rest of college football, which now has the ability to build elite rosters monetarily.

And Indiana didn’t spend the most among the Playoff field, insomuch as one can gather from the incomplete information available in the still somewhat lawless realm of present-day NIL. But its roster construction was done wisely with the money it had available.

There’s a not-uncommon position that this new era of college sports has rendered recruiting, in the way we long saw it, as now being secondary. That’s not entirely true.

Recruiting beyond the transfer portal played a part in Indiana’s championship. Cuban described in an interview airing on ESPN Monday how Cignetti pitched his vision for the program to the former NBA franchisee.

Cuban’s recounting sounded like the businessman’s version of a starry-eyed 18-year-old on national signing day explaining his letter of intent decision.

OK, so recruiting prospective donors who can provide the funds needed to compete at the championship level is still quite a bit different from how the previous era's championships were won on the prep recruiting trail. But it has become the most transformative change to the game, and Indiana’s sudden rise perfectly reflects that.

Because the Hoosiers were able to engineer such a dramatic turnaround through the new framework of the sport also doesn’t mean every longtime also-ran can instantly turn around their fortunes. Still, Indiana becoming college football’s newest first-time champion since 1996 does provide hope for the rest of the game’s dreamers that there might finally be a path to the top.