Putting Indiana football’s historic 12-0 2025 season into perspective

Indiana football officially moved to 12-0 with last Friday’s dominant 56-3 road win over rival Purdue.

Those 12 wins are the most in a season in program history and mark the Hoosiers’ second undefeated season after 1945’s Big Ten championship team went 9-0-1 with one tie in Big Ten play. The previous high came in head coach Curt Cignetti’s first season last year, when the Hoosiers finished 11-2 overall and 11-1 in regular season play.

There’s obviously more to play for with a Big Ten Football Championship game appearance looming on Saturday, but it’s worth taking a step back and putting the regular season into perspective. Going 12-0 is itself a remarkable feat that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Just six Big Ten programs have accomplished an undefeated, 12-0 regular season since 2000: Ohio State, Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and now Indiana as of 2025. Those first five have all won at least one Big Ten championship in the 21st century and two, Ohio State and Michigan, have won national championships.

Additionally, Indiana is the lone school in the Big Ten that can boast undefeated regular seasons in both of football and either one of men’s or women’s basketball during its time in the conference. The 1975-76 Indiana men’s basketball team is famously the most recent undefeated national champion in men’s basketball, though multiple schools nationally have gone undefeated in the regular season without winning the national title.

The closest a Big Ten school can come to matching this feat is UCLA, whose men’s program rather famously went undefeated for multiple seasons. The Bruins’ football program also has an undefeated regular season, going 6-0 in 1939 and 9-0 in 1954, both seasons in the Pacific Coast Conference.

As for in-state implications, Indiana becomes the most recent FBS program with an undefeated regular season. Notre Dame last accomplished this in 2018, Ball State has yet to do so and Purdue did so in 1943 when the Big Ten was known as the Western Conference, going 9-0. Only Indiana and Notre Dame have undefeated 12-0 regular seasons.