ORLANDO, Fla. — Now, there are no excuses left.
None.
Not for Florida. Not for Florida State. And not even for UCF, which still enjoys a little grace as the youngest member of the big-boy table — but only a little.
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In the modern era of college football, the words rebuild, timeline and foundation have become security blankets for programs that are underachieving relative to their resources. Sure, they sound credible. They sound responsible. But they are also mostly nonsense.
Indiana’s 27-21 victory over Miami in the national championship game Monday night detonated whatever validity those excuses had left.
Read that again:
Indiana — INDIANA! — just won the national championship … in football!
If that sentence doesn’t fundamentally reset expectations in Gainesville, Tallahassee and Orlando, then those programs aren’t paying attention to the sport they’re supposedly trying to win.
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“This is the best turnaround job in the history of college football,” ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit said of second-year coach Curt Cignetti turning previously pitiful Indiana into a national champion.
Here’s all you need to know about the College Football Playoff and the national title game: Indiana had been the losingest program in college football history, and Miami hadn’t mattered nationally since flip phones were cool. Ole Miss — a program I used to call “Ole Miserable” — went deeper into the playoff than any SEC program while perennially second-tier Texas Tech was a top-four playoff seed.
What’s it tell you when Ole Miss and Vanderbilt were two of the best teams in the big, bad SEC while former conference powers Florida, LSU and Auburn all fired their coaches? And what’s it tell you when Arizona State went from the Big 12 basement to the playoff last season, while SMU made the playoff in its first year in the ACC?
This isn’t chaos. This is clarity. This is the new reality where there are no excuses or alibis. The transfer portal and NIL didn’t just create parity; they are rewarding competence.
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Every program now rebuilds its roster annually. There is no more “wait until Year 3 when my recruits mature.” Your roster turns over constantly. Your job as a head coach is no longer to stockpile talent; it’s to identify, acquire, develop, align and deploy it faster than everyone else.
Cignetti understood that immediately. Mario Cristobal never forgot it. Lane Kiffin leaned into it at Ole Miss. Joey McGuire at Texas Tech embraced it. And suddenly the old hierarchy started wobbling.
Indiana didn’t win because it outspent Alabama or out-recruited Ohio State. The Hoosiers won because they evaluated better, developed harder, demanded more and cared less about stars and more about production. They brought players who believed in the program instead of players who believed in their press clippings.
Believe it or not, Cignetti’s roster ranked dead last in the Big Ten in the 247Sports.com talent composite that was released in August. After Monday night’s championship game, the Hoosiers ended the season by beating the teams ranked No. 2 (Alabama), No. 3 (Ohio State), No. 5 (Oregon) and No. 15 (Miami) in that same roster ranking formula.
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That’s not just sheer luck. That’s elite evaluation, development and alignment.
Which brings me back to Florida, Florida State and UCF.
Florida fired Billy Napier and replaced him with Jon Sumrall, who does not have the luxury of a long runway, nor should he. After all, the Gators are in the SEC and located in the middle of a recruiting hotbed with a huge athletic budget and rabid fan base.
If Indiana can go from historically irrelevant to juggernaut in two seasons, Florida does not get to talk about patience. The Gators don’t need a miracle. They need accountability for all the money they blew during the Napier era, er, error.
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If Sumrall wins early, Gainesville will crown him. If he doesn’t, the same social media mob that shredded Napier will sharpen their talons by October. That’s not unfair. That’s the job.
Meanwhile, at Florida State, Mike Norvell ran out of excuses two years ago. The Seminoles have already proved they can win in this era, which makes their massive regression even more damning. It’s no secret that if Norvell suffers a third consecutive losing season, his seat will go from hot to volcanic.
The lesson from Indiana and Miami isn’t that tradition doesn’t matter. It’s that tradition without execution is irrelevant. The sport no longer waits for you to “get back.” You either adapt quickly or get passed immediately.
And that goes for you, too, UCF. Scott Frost’s return bought him a grace year, mostly because nostalgia sells and expectations were modest. However, it doesn’t take long for that grace to turn into grumbling. UCF is in a power conference, it sits in talent-rich Florida and has proof-of-concept success from its own recent past. Another year of being a bowl-ineligible Big 12 also-ran won’t cut it.
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The fact is, Indiana and Miami didn’t cheat the system to get to the national title game; they mastered it. The lazy argument is that Indiana simply bought a national title with billionaire booster Mark Cuban’s NIL money. In reality, players followed Cignetti from James Madison not so much because of NIL packages but because they trusted the standard, knew what was required and believed in what they’d become. Production mattered more than pedigree. Effort mattered more than hype.
Miami’s revival followed the same principle. Cristobal didn’t soften because players got paid. He doubled down. He demanded more. He created a culture where accountability survived the portal. That’s why players came to Miami instead of fleeing it.
College football has spoken loudly and clearly and told us exactly what it values now:
Five-star evaluation over five-star rankings. Culture over comfort. Hunger over history. Truth over tradition. Urgency over patience.
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So if Indiana can be at the summit of the sport and Miami can be back in contention, then Florida, Florida State and UCF have no one left to blame.
Not the NCAA.
Not the portal.
Not NIL.
Only themselves.
The truth is staring at them in the mirror.
The sport has moved on.
The bar has been raised.
There are no excuses anymore.
The clock is ticking.
“We just won the national title at Indiana,” Cignetti said. “It can be done.”
