CLEMSON — All during the week, whether on the radio, television or social media, college football fans and media have wondered if there has ever been a story close to this year’s Indiana Hoosiers.

In case you have been living under a rock for the last week, Indiana won its first national championship in college football, while becoming the first team in 130 years to produce a 16-0 record.

It is an amazing story considering how bad Indiana’s football program has been historically. Until 2024, Indiana had never produced a 10-win season. They had won just one conference championship and had just three bowl wins.

Now they are the 2025 National Champions. It feels weird to write.

But as good as the Indiana story is, they are not the first team to come out of leftfield and win a national championship.

It continues to surprise me how many people forget who the first true Cinderella was in college football.

The 1981 Clemson Tigers are the first true rags-to-riches story in college football.

Yes, even back then Clemson’s football history was better than what Indiana had endured for decades on the gridiron. However, the Clemson Football Program had not had success on the national stage for a long time prior to 1977.

Though Clemson won three ACC Championships in the mid-1960s, it did not have a good enough record to go to a bowl game, as there were only 10 bowl games at the time.

When the 1977 Tigers came out of nowhere and won eight games, it earned the program its first bowl invitation since 1959. It was also the first time Clemson won eight or more games in a season since that same 1959 campaign.

The following year the Tigers went 11-1, won the ACC Championship, beat Ohio State in the Gator Bowl and finished ranked No. 6 in the final Associated Press Poll. Clemson went from a program that won 29 games combined from 1970-’76, to winning 27 games from 1977-’79.

However, the program slipped in 1980. In Danny Ford’s second year, the Tigers went 6-5 and did not receive a bowl invitation. Ford was nearly fired, which he likely would have been had Clemson not beat rival South Carolina in the regular season finale.

When Clemson opened the 1981 season no one saw what was about to happen. The Tigers entered the 1981 season unranked. No one expected them to win the ACC or anything else for that matter.

But Clemson stunned everyone. It became the first team in the AP Poll era to start a season unranked and then go on to a win national championship. They became the first team from the ACC to beat three top 10 teams on their way to 12-0 record and a national championship.

It was Clemson’s first undefeated and untied team since 1948. They became just the second ACC school at the time to win a national championship.

Clemson was such a surprise to everyone, no one in the national media and no one on the Nebraska team even knew where Clemson was located.

Most thought Clemson was in Western North Carolina.

By the way, Danny Ford became the youngest coach to win a national championship in college football. He was 33 years old.

Ford’s record still stands today.

Though Indiana’s run to a national championship is the most amazing turnaround in college football history, Clemson’s 1981 run to a national championship was not too shabby, either.

From there, Clemson became one of the top program’s in college football in the 1980s. Only four times since 1977 have the Tigers had a losing season, one of the best runs in the history of the game.

Under Dabo Swinney, Clemson has won two more national championships and played for it two other times.

So, Indiana has a lot to be proud of, and it should be, but the Hoosiers are not the first rags-to-richest story in college football.