How Indiana upended decades of futility to become college football’s most unlikely rising power

Indiana Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti runs onto the field with his team before a game against Ohio State. Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

Galen Clavio walked into the student mailroom – back when student mailrooms were still a thing – and found an envelope stuffed in his mailbox. Inside were six tickets for each of that season’s Indiana University football games, free to him as a dorm resident because, to put it bluntly, no one was terribly interested in going to Hoosier football games, let alone paying for them.

It was 1997 and the Hoosiers were terrible. Not that being terrible was unusual. For the better part of its 138-year existence, Indiana football has excelled at being awful.

It owned the record for most losses in Division I history (713) and the worst winning