The Indiana Hoosiers, out of nowhere, won the National Championship, finishing off an undefeated 2025-2026 season.

It’s not an understatement to say that it was one of the most surprising outcomes in modern college football history. A program that had little track record of success, more commonly viewed as one of the easy wins on a team’s schedule than a legitimate contender for major postseason accomplishments. It was a remarkable achievement. 

In fact, just before the regular season started, Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian said he thought undefeated teams were a thing of the past. Then Indiana goes 16-0. 

TEXAS HEAD COACH STEVE SARKISIAN THINKS DOMINANT CFB TEAMS ARE A THING OF THE PAST

You’d think after a season like that, the Hoosiers program, and especially head coach Curt Cignetti, would take some time to enjoy it. Bask in the glow, take some time off, do a sort of “victory lap” through the media, talking about what it meant. 

Well, Indiana and Cignetti did the opposite. The exact opposite. Because he’s a football guy first, and football guys think about one thing: more football.

ESPN spoke to Cignetti on the Indiana campus, where he detailed how he approaches coaching and development.

“We’ve got a way of doing things,” he said. “How you do something is how you do everything. Consistency, performance is the key to the drill. So right now we’re teaching guys not only scheme, but standards, expectations, and how we want to play the game between the white lines, and I see us making progress.”

But perhaps the clearest indicator of how committed Cignetti is to keeping the focus on football came when ESPN reported that he told Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson and university president Pamela Whitten to “turn down all external requests and speaking engagements.” Why? So he could “continue to focus on football.”

“I’m 95% football,” Cignetti said. “We’ve said no to everything except for the Indy 500.”

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“I’ve got to be able to do my job,” he said. “These things pull you out of the office, and they take up your time. I mean, I have a job to do. Believe it or not, I’m busy.”

That’s a football guy if we’ve ever seen one.

Obviously, all coaches are focused on their jobs. It’s an extremely demanding profession that requires dedication and extraordinary amounts of time for recruiting, game planning, and personnel evaluation. But it’s clear that Cignetti’s focus, potentially as a result of his time coaching with Nick Saban, has completely changed the Indiana program. Along with nailing the transfer portal, of course. 

Players can see that single-minded purpose and respond to it, and the Hoosiers played with the discipline and efficiency of a team that mirrors its coach. Even though Cignetti has to replace Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza and other key players, it’s hard to bet against Indiana being right back in contention. Because Cignetti is all football.

A Louisiana man who pleaded guilty to raping and impregnating his 12-year-old relative is an illegal immigrant from Honduras, federal officials confirmed to Fox News.

Jose Lopez-Montoya, 41, described by local media as a “Lake Charles man,” faces up to 99 years in prison after repeatedly abusing the minor.

The Department of Homeland Security told Fox News that Lopez-Montoya is a Honduran national who illegally entered the U.S. in 2011 under the Obama administration.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ARRESTED FOR KIDNAPPING, ATTACKING TEEN NEAR TRUMP’S BACKYARD: POLICE

“Once again, the media is running cover for a criminal illegal alien. This sicko pled guilty to incest. He raped and impregnated his 12 year-old relative. ICE is working with our Louisiana partners to ensure this monster is never loose in American communities again,” the agency added.

 “This ‘Lake Charles Man’ is actually an illegal alien from Honduras who admitted to illegally entering the U.S. in 2011,” DHS added.

MEXICAN NATIONAL CONVICTED OF ILLEGALLY VOTING IN US AFTER FALSE CITIZENSHIP CLAIMS FACES REMOVAL: DHS

The victim later gave birth in July 2024, and Lopez-Montoya admitted the child was his, according to KPLC.

Authorities said the abuse occurred over a two-year period while Lopez-Montoya served as the girl’s guardian.

Lopez-Montoya was arrested on two counts of first-degree rape and is also subject to an immigration detainer.

He pleaded guilty this week to aggravated crimes against nature by incest and faces 25 to 99 years in prison, according to KPLC. His sentencing is scheduled for April 28.

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville and his podcast co-host Al Hunt analyzed the results of the Virginia redistricting vote, agreeing that President Donald Trump started a redistricting war.

Democrats scored a major victory Tuesday when Virginia voters narrowly passed a congressional redistricting referendum that could give the party a significant boost in the battle for the U.S. House of Representatives majority in the 2026 midterm elections, the Associated Press reported.

The ballot measure gives the Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature — rather than the state’s current nonpartisan commission — temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election. It could result in a 10–1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation, up from their current 6–5 edge.

Hunt lamented on “Politics War Room” that the redistricting vote was a terrible thing, even if he personally would have supported it as a politically pragmatic necessity.

TRUMP HAILS TEXAS REDISTRICTING APPROVAL THAT COULD ADD FIVE GOP CONGRESSIONAL SEATS NATIONWIDE

“That is an awful outcome. Virginia is a blue state, but it’s not a 90% blue state,” he said. “Democrats, however, had no choice. This was all due to Donald Trump, who, desperate to avoid losing the House last year, demanded Republicans gerrymander in Texas and elsewhere and they were going to try to fix the elections. What he didn’t figure was that Democrats would respond just as ruthlessly, California and Virginia in particular.”

“I think the outcome in Virginia is terrible,” Hunt stressed. “I would have voted for it, even though I think it’s terrible. They did it by referendum. The voters decided rather than backroom deals like they did in Texas and in Missouri and elsewhere.”

He went on to argue that while this may be something to understandable for Republicans to take issue with, he advised, “Tell them to look next door at North Carolina, a purple, slightly red state [that] gerrymandered their congressional districts for what’s expected to be a 11-3 advantage.”

SPANBERGER FACES ‘BAIT-AND-SWITCH’ BACKLASH IN FINAL HOURS BEFORE REDISTRICTING REFERENDUM

“I’ll tell ya, 11–3 in North Carolina is every bit as bad as 10–1 in Virginia,” he said. “Trump, who only cares about himself, started this whole damn fiasco, and in the end, I think it may help Democrats more than it helps him.”

“Well, you got to blame the Supreme Court, too,” Carville said. “I mean, I hate to bring the bearer of bad news, but the great American institution called the Supreme Court said, ‘Well OK, there’s no equal protection. There’s no anything. The legislature can do what they want.’”

“The court has become so disreputable, so unpopular, and look at the polls. I’m not the only person that believes that it has to be saved from itself. That’s how bad it’s become,” Carville said. “But that they’re the people that let this stuff go with all this cockamamie 11-to-3 that, you know, I mean, as if the voters aren’t required to have equal protection during redistricting.”

DARK MONEY FLOODS VIRGINIA AHEAD OF REDISTRICTING VOTE THAT COULD HAND DEMOCRATS HOUSE EDGE

“I have no idea how you come up with that theory that that legal theory could work, but they say it does,” Carville said. “They’re corrupt. No code of ethics, no rules of conduct, no nothing.”

Hunt went on to suggest that politics now feels like a standoff where both sides are afraid to “unilaterally disarm” and instead opt for cynical power plays like gerrymandering.

“The problem with this is when you let politicians choose their voters rather than voters choose their politicians, you create politicians who have very little incentive to govern or compromise,” he said. “So it’s a terrible system, but this year it was all brought on by Donald Trump.”

“Yeah,” Carville agreed. “I think the Supreme Court did its part, but yeah, it wouldn’t have happened without Trump.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and was referred to the following statement by RNC national press secretary Kiersten Pels:

“46% of Virginians voted Republican in the last federal election, yet Democrats are rigging the system to cling to power and silence voters they can’t win over. This map is an unconstitutional partisan power grab designed to disenfranchise millions of voters and tilt the playing field. Abigail Spanberger broke her promise to Virginians by advancing a gerrymandered map that serves her party’s interests after pledging she would not. The RNC will continue this fight in court to protect Virginia voters and ensure fair representation across the Commonwealth.”

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser, Jasmine Baehr, and Charles Creitz contributed to this report.