Mark Cuban’s Investment With Hoosiers Pays off After Indiana’s Massive Win

College football fans (maybe not Miami Hurricanes devotees) were greeted with a storybook season-ending win for Indiana's Hoosiers in January 2026. But some viewers were left a little stunned to see Mark Cuban in attendance at the game, showing his support for Indiana. It left a lot of people thinking: why is he an Indiana fan?

Cuban's devotion to Indiana sports teams dates back to the fact that he attended school in the Hoosier State. He first attended the University of Pittsburgh before ultimately transferring to Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., as per his LinkedIn page.

NBC Miami said that "Cuban has poured millions into his alma mater over the years." One of these sizable contributions includes a whopping $5 million allocated "for a sports media center" he handed over to the school in 2015.

And CNBC chronicled how his experience in building championship-contending teams had a massive impact.

And the billionaire hasn't been shy about how happy and surprised he's been seeing the university's football team's rise in rankings throughout the years. In an email with NBC Miami, Cuban wrote: "I've literally had Centenarians tell me how unimaginable this has been."

Cuban continued: "Players on the '68 Rose Bowl team tell me the same thing. It's just all unreal." Many are quick to point out that they believe there's a direct connection to Cuban's donations to the school's sports program and its growing sports prowess.

Namely, the fact that Indiana managed to best the Miami Hurricanes in the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship. The Midwestern squad also did it on Miami's home turf at the Hard Rock Stadium in the Sunshine State, quashing Carson Beck's hopes of securing a victory for his squad.

In order to appreciate just how dramatic a turnaround Cuban's former university of attendance performed, one needs to look at the team's history. ESPN argued why the ball club's 16-0 record, capped off with a National Championship and a Heisman Trophy win for Fernando Mendoza, is, in fact, a bona fide "Cinderella story."

That's because Indy was the first Division I college football team to lose 700 games. And this was back in 2022. Just four years later, and now Indiana's college pigskin-slinging team is standing tall, with throngs of accolades in tow.

Indiana's head coach, Curt Cignetti, calls the team's upward trajectory "one of the greatest stories of all time," according to ESPN. He went on to state: "If you look at the record since Indiana started playing football and relative to the success we've had the last two years, we've broken a lot of records here in terms of wins, championships, postseason games, [and] top-10 wins."

He capped off the comment by stating: "It's been kind of surreal." Approximately three years after he was hired as Indy's head coach, Cignetti is the toast of the town. And it looks like he backed up all of the smack-talking he made against other top 10 D1 ball clubs since Indiana brought him on board.

Just a day after he was hired, he took a microphone at an Indiana State University basketball game. "Purdue sucks, but so does Michigan and Ohio State," he told fans in attendance. While at a press conference afterward, he told reporters, "I win, Google me."