Indiana beat Alabama 38-3 in the 112th Rose Bowl on January 1, 2026. It was the Hoosiers' first Rose Bowl appearance since 1968, their first bowl win of any kind since 1991, and Alabama's most lopsided defeat since 1998.
The line of scrimmage decided it
The final margin was 35 points, and the reason was not exotic. Indiana outgained Alabama 407 to 193. The Hoosiers rushed 50 times for 215 yards; Alabama managed 23 rushing yards on 17 carries, an average of 1.4 per attempt. Indiana converted 9 of 14 third downs. Alabama converted 3 of 11 and went 0 for 2 on fourth down.
Fernando Mendoza, in his first game after winning Indiana's first Heisman Trophy, completed 14 of 16 passes for 192 yards and three touchdowns. Alabama blitzed him 12 times, the most the Crimson Tide had blitzed anyone all season. Against five or more rushers he went 8 for 8 with three touchdowns and 161 yards.
Charlie Becker, Omar Cooper Jr. and Elijah Sarratt caught the touchdown passes. Kaelon Black ran for 99 yards, and he and Roman Hemby added fourth-quarter rushing scores. Indiana ran for 101 yards in the fourth quarter alone.
The MVP nobody predicted
The offensive MVP award did not go to the Heisman winner. It went to center Pat Coogan, and Mendoza reportedly jumped for joy when he heard. Coogan noted it was likely the first time an offensive lineman had taken the honor.
It was a fitting choice. Indiana won this game by being more physical than Alabama for four quarters, which is not a sentence anyone would have written about a Hoosiers team in living memory.
Alabama's night ended early
Quarterback Ty Simpson was knocked out of the game early in the third quarter. Indiana already led 24-0 by then. Kalen DeBoer's second season ended in the same stadium where Nick Saban's final season had ended two years before.
The Crimson Tide had arrived as the No. 9 seed after beating Oklahoma 34-24 in the first round. They finished 11-4.
The bye-week streak, broken
Indiana became the first team to advance after a first-round bye in the 12-team format. The five teams before them had all gone out in the quarterfinals, including Ohio State the night before in the Cotton Bowl. Whatever the layoff had done to everyone else, it did not touch the Hoosiers.
The audience
The game drew 23.9 million viewers on ESPN, the most-watched Playoff game since the field expanded to 12 teams. The four quarterfinals averaged 19.3 million, up 14 percent year over year.
Part of that was the Rose Bowl's standing. Part of it was Alabama. But a substantial part was that a national audience wanted to see whether Indiana was real.
What came next
The crowd in Pasadena tilted heavily Indiana and finished the night chanting at the Alabama sideline. The Hoosiers moved on to the Peach Bowl semifinal against Oregon, a rematch of a 30-20 Indiana win in Eugene that October, and won that 56-22.
Two weeks later they beat Miami to finish 16-0 and win the national championship. The Rose Bowl was the game where the rest of the sport stopped treating them as a novelty.
