Indiana broke the brains of everybody who cares about college football this year. 

Just two seasons after going 3-9, arguably the worst power-conference football program in the country went 16-0 and won the national championship. They did it in the 12-team playoff era, which most people assumed would make undefeated seasons basically impossible.

They also did it with a roster ranked 72nd in the 247Sports talent composite, which measures how many four- and five-star high school prospects are on each roster. For reference, Tulane ranked three spots higher.

Naturally, everyone in college football wants to know if the Bannister effect is in play. In 1954, Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, a feat that was widely considered impossible.

Once Bannister did it, many others followed. It showed it was always possible, but a mental block was holding people back.

Kudos to Josh Pate for being the first person I heard connect this idea to Indiana.

If it’s now truly possible for struggling programs to flip the script quickly, make the College Football Playoff, or even win a national title, who’s next?

I think there are two prime candidates in the Big 12, and ESPN agrees with me on one of them. 

ESPN’s Bill Connelly predicted the 2026 College Football Playoff field using the typical “paths” teams take to get there. One of those paths is simple: a team with a losing record the previous season makes the field.

Connelly slotted Oklahoma State into that category. Here’s what he wrote about the Cowboys. 

Hear me out! Were the Cowboys abjectly hopeless in 2025? Absolutely. They plummeted to 1-11 with what was, per SP+, their worst team since 1963 (and they had some awfully bad teams in the 1990s). But they made a potentially dynamite hire in Eric Morris -- one of my favorite hires of the cycle -- and he has basically imported his dynamite North Texas offense, bringing in 17 former Mean Green players including stars in QB Drew Mestemaker, RB Caleb Hawkins and WR Wyatt Young. OSU will score plenty of points in 2026, and if the Cowboys' close-games luck flips as well, they could be a huge turnaround story.

There’s definitely a case to be made. The bones of Oklahoma State’s program are in much better shape than Indiana’s were when Curt Cignetti showed up. Yes, the Pokes were 1-11 last season, but there’s still a winning infrastructure in place.

Cignetti got a huge boost in year one by bringing a handful of his best players from James Madison to Bloomington. That helped propel Indiana into playoff contention right away.

New Cowboys coach Eric Morris has done the same thing with North Texas, and then some. The group is headlined by QB Drew Mestemaker, RB Caleb Hawkins, and WR Wyatt Young, all of whom were top-five portal players at their positions.

The combination of that influx of talent and the continuity of playing within essentially the same system gives Oklahoma State a real chance to hit the ground running.

It’s not going to be easy to beat Oklahoma State in Stillwater. Boone Pickens Stadium is one of the toughest stadiums in the conference to play in, and after two miserable seasons, the fans are going to be charged up to get behind a new regime. 

Is it a long shot that they’ll actually make the playoff? Probably. But if you’re looking for a team with the ingredients to pull off an Indiana-esque turnaround, Oklahoma State fits the profile.

So does Houston. In fact, the Cougars are already almost halfway there.

Head coach Willie Fritz already turned a four-win program into a ten-win program in year two, and with a returning star quarterback and a top ten portal class, there’s plenty of momentum heading into 2026. 

QB Conner Weigman was the single biggest difference maker in lifting the Cougars to a ten-win season. Getting him back was the biggest move of the offseason, but Fritz didn’t stop there. 

WR Amare Thomas was another key piece they retained, and Houston’s seventh-ranked portal class fortified the running game with a pair of four-star offensive linemen and a four-star running back.

Defensively, Fritz already proved he can field a top-tier Big 12 unit even after losing defensive coordinator Shiel Wood to Texas Tech last offseason. I’m confident he’ll have one of the league’s best defenses again.

I haven’t even touched on the biggest similarity between Fritz’s Houston program and Cignetti’s Indiana program: their resumes. 

Fritz (65) and Cignetti (64) are almost the exact same age and have almost the exact same track record. Both are proven winners across multiple stops at lower levels.

Cignetti thrived at IUP, Elon, and James Madison. Fritz excelled at Blinn Junior College, Central Missouri, Sam Houston, Georgia Southern, and Tulane before arriving at Houston.

Neither was a “sexy” name when he was hired, but all they do is win, no matter what level they’re at.

They fit the same script: a coach in his sixties with a long track record of winning at the Division II and FCS levels takes over a Power Four school coming off a three- or four-win season.

I have a hunch that a year from now, Fritz will be a much more national name than he is right now.

What You Need to Know

• Does the Big 12 have more national champion contenders than any other men’s basketball conference? One prominent national analyst says so. Here are the Big 12 teams he thinks can win it all. 

• Big 12 basketball is what SEC football thinks it is. Here are all the Big 12 teams I think are legitimate contenders for the national championship. 

• The numbers prove that the Big 12 has four of the top ten most underrated football programs of the last five seasons. 

• The best quote of the week goes to former TCU head coach Gary Patterson, who is now the defensive coordinator at USC.

• I have to applaud WIBW’s Jason Kinander for his reality check of K-State men’s basketball head coach Jerome Tang.

• Here’s a great One Shining Moment edit for the college football season!

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