Back during the 2022 season, Mel Tucker and Michigan State football suffered what could only be described as one of the most embarrassing losses in program history.
The Spartans surrendered a comfortable lead to a bad Indiana team in East Lansing, and it was the last realistic opportunity for the five-win Spartans to earn a bowl bid. Unfortunately, Tom Allen and the Hoosiers completed the comeback, and were able to pull off the win in East Lansing thanks to a missed chip-shot from less than 30 yards out.
It was rock-bottom for the Spartans.
That loss to Indiana felt like the beginning of the end for Tucker, and losing to the Hoosiers was considered ‘embarrassing’ at the time. Allen’s Hoosiers were one of the worst teams in the Big Ten near the end of his tenure, and they won a total of nine games over his final three seasons. He was let go following the 2023 season, and Michigan State, too, was looking for a new coach at the time.
Indiana landed on Curt Cignetti while Michigan State hired Jonathan Smith.
Indiana proved that anyone — including MSU — can win it all
Since then, the programs have gone in completely opposite directions.
Cignetti was able to take a program that had never won 10-plus games in a single season to the College Football Playoff, where the Hoosiers lost to Notre Dame in round one. Still, no Indiana fan was upset with an 11-2 season.
Was it a fluke, though? Cignetti quickly proved that it wasn’t, going undefeated in the 2025 regular season, beating Ohio State in the Big Ten title game, earning the playoff’s No. 1 seed, and then cruising to its first-ever national title game. Mind you, this was just two years removed from going 3-9.
The greatest turnaround in college football history should open every Michigan State fan’s eyes. Before this national title win by Indiana, it was assumed that only college football’s blue-bloods and biggest spenders would be able to win it all. Michigan State fans just assumed that their ceiling was a playoff berth because there was just no way they’d be able to out-spend the Alabamas, Georgias, and Ohio States of college football.
That’s no longer the case.
Indiana did spend some money and it’s getting some help from billionaire alum Mark Cuban, but Michigan State has multiple billionaire donors and alums. This is possible with the right coach.
Is that going to be Pat Fitzgerald? Hopefully, but Indiana just proved to the college football world that in the days of NIL and the transfer portal, anyone can win a national championship.
In the famous words of Mark Dantonio (who almost did it at MSU): Why not us?