Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Indiana students celebrate during the Indiana versus Michigan State football game at Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025.
For more than a century, the Indiana Hoosiers program was nothing more than a laughingstock in the larger landscape of college football.
That all changed two years ago when they hired head coach Curt Cignetti and made a shocking run to the College Football Playoff. It then changed in even more exceptional fashion a season ago when the Hoosiers went on to win perhaps the most improbable national championship in the history of the sport.
But now, rather than reaping the benefits of that success, Indiana students are being shut out of Hoosiers home games thanks to a new limited ticket plan.
Indiana Angers Students With New Football Season Ticket Plan
On Thursday evening, Indiana announced its claims process for the 2026-2027 athletic season, including football and basketball.
The tickets cost $450, which is more than Big Ten counterparts Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State. But even worse, students are only allowed to select five of the Hoosiers’ eight home games on the season to attend, and they’re understandably furious about it.
As a freshman I watched us squeak by Akron in 4 overtime’s. As a senior I have to choose a max of 5 games pic.twitter.com/bzWGyQnDRz
— Hoosier Captain (@hoosier_captain) July 30, 2026
“I don’t want to tweet at IU staff but this claim process is the most flawed system humanly possible,” a X post wrote. “Why as someone who has attended over 50 IU games in 2 years, including games off campus, should I have to PICK between watching OSU or USC?”
Now, it’s important to note that Indiana’s Memorial Stadium has a seating capacity of just around 53,000, which is about half the size of the other Big Ten programs mentioned above.
However, you’d think there would be a way to show priority to either upperclassmen or students who have shown they attended home games for multiple seasons, including those before Cignetti arrived.
Merely sitting through a difficult season shouldn’t guarantee you tickets to anything in the future. But you should reap some sort of benefit for being a diehard supporter of the program.
Instead, committed students are being swept aside as the program grows into prominence, and that feels wholly unfair.