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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nPreview of the college football playoff national championship game between Indiana and Miami, featuring key players, strategies, and predictions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Among those donning cream and crimson at tonight’s College Football Playoff national championship game<\/a> will be notable Indiana<\/a> alum Mark Cuban<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Dallas Mavericks<\/a> minority owner has played a key role in helping Curt Cignetti<\/a> and the Hoosiers<\/a> build this roster through donations and NIL fundraising. Cuban and Cignetti both hail from Western Pennsylvania and were even born in the same hospital. That connection has bonded the two as Indiana reaches football heights never seen in Bloomington.<\/p>\n National championship predictions: <\/strong>Will Indiana or Miami win CFP title?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n “I never thought,” Cuban said on Monday’s ‘First Take’ of seeing IU in a national title game. “The highlight when I was at IU was going to the Holiday Bowl with coach (Lee) Corso, right? No, never in my wildest dreams. We barely even went to football games, let alone thought we might succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuban was on the sidelines for IU’s Peach Bowl win over Oregon, and told Front Office Sports<\/a>\u00a0he had made another donation to Indiana’s athletic department during the Hoosiers\u2019 CFP run.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about designing a program that just went and outbid everybody, it was putting together a program and an organization and a culture,” Cuban said Monday. “All the things you need to do to win, no matter what the sport is.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuban, who played rugby at Indiana, hadn’t been a major benefactor for IU football prior to Cignetti’s hire. So what changed?<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t any one thing, it was just who he was,” Cuban said about what attracted him to Cignetti. “He didn\u2019t come in and say, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m going to do all these grand things.\u2019 He\u2019s just, \u2018This is how we do it. I have a specific way, it\u2019s always worked. There\u2019s no reason why it\u2019s not going to work again.\u2019 I\u2019m like investing in an entrepreneur in \u2018Shark Tank\u2019. He\u2019d been there and done that, he had an approach. He has a system. The way he designs everything, the way he builds organizations. That\u2019s really what connected me.\u201d<\/p>\n New Portal King: <\/strong>Curt Cignetti steals crown Lane Kiffin gave up to go to LSU<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Building a champion: <\/strong>JMU transfers are backbone of Indiana turnaround. Is that blueprint repeatable?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Indiana and Cignetti have used the transfer portal to rebuild the Hoosiers roster and build a roster capable of competing for a national championship. A key part of the portal is how programs spend the player-revenue sharing from the House vs. NCAA<\/em> settlement, in addition to NIL.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw it with the Mavs in the NBA, there\u2019s kind of like a salary cap. You have to know how to build a team,” Cuban said. “You have to know what kind of players to go after. It\u2019s not about winning the portal. It\u2019s about getting athletes and players who want to, know their role, work to fill that role, know what their position is with the team, and having an organization and coaches that understand you\u2019re not getting players who are coming in for four years to develop, then they\u2019re great when their seniors. You\u2019re coming in, like coach says: \u2018I want production, not potential.\u2019 And understanding that is big.<\/p>\n “And then the other thing I love about the program. They talk about no five stars, limited four stars. What that means to me, they\u2019re not out there trying to outbid everybody. We\u2019re not talking about, \u2018We got the most expensive quarterback, and we outbid everybody else.\u2019 Not at all. To me, when a program does that, that\u2019s a desperate program. Putting together the exact right player. When you hear about Fernando (Mendoza) talking about his conversation with CigGPT as I like to call him, about what it takes to win the Heisman, Cig was very clear: It takes a team to win the Heisman. If you don\u2019t have the right players around you, if you don\u2019t have the right people knowing their roles around you, you aren\u2019t going to win the Heisman. And to me that says it all. Successful teams in the NBA, and across all sports, they have a culture, they have a system, they have coaches and administrators who know how to put those pieces together, but you get athletes that you can fit into those roles. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve done better than anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n The CFP championship game between Indiana and Miami will air nationally on ESPN, with Chris Fowler (play-by-play) and Kirk Herbstreit (analyst) calling the game and Holly Rowe and Molly McGrath serving as sideline reporters.<\/p>\n Streaming options for the game include the ESPN app, which requires a valid cable login to access, and\u00a0Fubo<\/a>, which offers a free trial to potential subscribers.<\/p>\n Indiana and Miami are scheduled to kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday, Jan. 19 from Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Indiana vs. Miami: College football playoff national championship preview Preview of the college football playoff national championship game between Indiana and Miami, featuring key players, strategies, and predictions. Among those donning cream and crimson at tonight’s College Football Playoff national championship game will be notable Indiana alum Mark Cuban. The Dallas Mavericks minority owner has … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Mark-Cuban-donations-key-in-Indiana-football-national-championship-run.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17538,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536\/revisions\/17538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}National championship TV channel on today<\/h2>\n
National championship time: When is Indiana vs Miami today?<\/h2>\n
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