Ohio State ends Indiana's 22-game win streak, but Bloomington's football revival is just getting started

By Friday evening, the lines outside Bloomington apparel stores stretched down the block, restaurants were filling up hours before kickoff, and students were spilling out of the Upstairs Pub chanting for a football team that, not long ago, most of them would have ignored. Then came Saturday — and No. 4 Ohio State handed No. 5 Indiana a 19-15 home loss that ended a 22-game winning streak and dashed any hope of matching last season's perfect 12-0 regular-season record. The loss stings. But it does not erase what has happened to this town.

The game was the first top-five college football matchup played inside Memorial Stadium since 1960, according to Fox News. Indiana carried that winning streak into the contest — its longest in program history — after winning the CFP national championship in 2025. The Buckeyes' visit was, by any measure, the most anticipated home game Bloomington had seen in decades. And then Ohio State won it.

According to Wikipedia's account of the 2026 season, the loss marked Indiana's first defeat since the first playoff round of the 2024 season. Head coach Curt Cignetti, now in his third year, stands at 33-2 across his tenure at IU, according to Sport & State.

We're a football school now, and I hate to say that about the basketball program. We spent years praying for some type of revival of college football within this fan base, and we finally have it during one of the craziest times in sports.— Edward, fan from outside Indianapolis

That sentiment — unthinkable a few years ago in a town that lived for basketball — captures the scope of what Cignetti has done. Indiana became the first Division I college football program to lose 700 games in 2022, according to Sport & State, and had never reached double-digit wins in a season before Cignetti arrived. The program's transformation since then has reordered priorities across the entire athletic department and the city itself.

I don't know if that chant happens if that foreign tour was two years earlier. I do think Indiana graduates and Indiana fans walk around town, whatever that town may be, feeling two inches taller. There is a confidence to the place now that he has imbued that I think is special and unique. That's the biggest impact that he's had.— Jeremy Gray, Senior Associate Athletic Director and department spokesman, Indiana University

Gray was describing a moment during Indiana's women's volleyball exhibition trip to Istanbul, Turkey, in late May — when a 'Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoosiers' chant broke out spontaneously among passersby on the street. It is the kind of anecdote that would have been implausible before Cignetti's arrival.

The economic numbers behind the cultural shift are concrete. Mike McAfee, executive director of Visit Bloomington, told Sport & State that hotel rates on football weekends have climbed from roughly $180 to between $300 and $500 per night — and above $600 for marquee games. Occupancy rates have risen from 60-70 percent in earlier years to 80-90 percent during Cignetti's tenure. The economic impact per home game weekend has roughly doubled, from $3-4 million fifteen years ago to between $6 million and $10 million now.

That incremental revenue is all because of winning. It's all because of Coach Cig.— Mike McAfee, Executive Director, Visit Bloomington

Inside the campus bookstore, manager Logan Bruner told Sport & State his only concern is keeping shelves stocked. Charlie Becker jerseys, Fernando Mendoza merchandise — including a bobblehead of his diving touchdown from January's championship — and bomber jackets with 'Indiana football' on the sleeve are among the fastest-moving items. The athletic department conducted an informal audit of the program's media exposure value and concluded it amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in free publicity, according to Gray.

The pride that we're hearing around the country, not just in Bloomington, about being an alum of IU Bloomington, is just tremendous.— Mayor Kerry Thomson, Bloomington

Thomson characterized Cignetti's overall impact as 'transformative,' according to Sport & State. The visibility has extended well beyond game days: Fox's Big Noon Saturday and ESPN's College GameDay have featured Indiana as one of their two highlighted teams on seven separate occasions since the start of the 2024 college football season. Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy and appeared on Good Morning America. Cignetti himself has starred in State Farm commercials.

I've been coming to games for thirty years, and I've never seen this type of excitement. We've earned this sh-t, and I promise you this fan base isn't cocky. We just expect to win now, which clearly wasn't the case just a few years ago.— Thomas, longtime Indiana season ticket holder

The last time Indiana defeated Ohio State in Bloomington was 1988. The Hoosiers finally snapped their losing streak to the Buckeyes last season — in the Big Ten championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium — and Saturday's home loss means that particular milestone in Bloomington remains unachieved. But the broader trajectory of the program is not measured by one result. Cignetti's 33-2 record, a national title, a program-record eight players selected in the 2026 NFL Draft, and a campus culture that now draws students specifically because Indiana is a 'football school' are the markers that define what has changed.

For other programs watching from a distance, the Hoosiers' rise has become a reference point. As Fox News noted, athletic directors around college football are actively trying to replicate what Cignetti built — a complete program turnaround, in two years, at a school that had spent decades as a cautionary tale. Indiana now stands at 6-1 and faces Michigan next, with a College Football Playoff appearance still within reach for the third consecutive season.

Why it matters — Indiana's transformation from college football's all-time loss leader to a national championship program — and what it has done to a city's economy and identity — is now the benchmark every struggling program in America is trying to copy.

Reported by foxnews.com, sportandstate.com, en.wikipedia.org