‘This is why’: Aiden Fisher’s leadership powers IU football’s historic victory at Oregon
- Josh Pos
- 5h ago
Walk the halls of Memorial Stadium and you’ll find a board listing every Indiana football captain, dating back to Harry Wise in 1887.
The only blank spaces? 2024 and 2025 — an abnormality for most programs, but the norm under head coach Curt Cignetti.
Cignetti doesn’t name official captains. Instead, the same four players walk out for the coin toss each week. Among them, senior linebacker Aiden Fisher always stands closest to the head official. On the road, he makes the call.
On Saturday, he chose heads — and got it right. Indiana started its biggest game of the year with a small win, led by its loudest voice.
From that toss to the final snap of a statement 30–20 win against No. 3 Oregon, Fisher led the way.
A 2024 first-team All-American, Fisher stuffed the stat sheet on Saturday afternoon. He tallied a season-high 13 tackles and 1.5 sacks.
As the lone defensive player able to hear defensive coordinator Bryant Haines on the field, Fisher is entrusted by his teammates to relay the signals before plays.
Fisher and the Indiana defense had to be nearly perfect to contain Heisman-caliber quarterback Dante Moore and Oregon’s explosive offense.
Moore entered the game posting video game numbers. His eye-popping 14 touchdowns to one interception jumped off the page. A big part of Oregon’s success entering the game was the offensive line, which had allowed a single sack through five games.
The game’s opening play ended with Kellen Wyatt and Mario Landino combining for a sack of Moore.
It became a tone-setting play that infused confidence into the dominant IU defense.
The lone blemish – a 44-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter – didn’t rattle the defense. As they’ve done all year, they refused to be defined by one play.
With the mishap in the rearview, Fisher and the Hoosiers refused to give an inch in the second half.
“We had a lot of ugly things on film,” he said. “But we just kept battling and fighting.”
As the offense sputtered, the defense continued to control the game, dominating the Ducks’ offense.
Oregon entered halftime with 203 yards of offense and 10 points. In the second half, the Ducks managed just 64 yards and a field goal.
“When you go at a team like [Oregon], you have to be able to manipulate angles and find their weakness, if there is one, and attack it,” Fisher said. “I think we did a good job today.”
Complementary football has been the foundation of Indiana’s success.
In the fourth quarter, quarterback Fernando Mendoza threw a costly pick-six that nearly erased what Indiana’s defense had built.
But he responded with a touchdown pass to Elijah Sarratt to reclaim the lead — and the defense followed suit, sealing the monumental win with a pair of interceptions in a three-play span.
Indiana’s dominance hasn’t been limited to Saturday. The defense has allowed just 45 points through its first three conference games, including two against top-10 offenses in Illinois and Oregon.
For Fisher, these victories are years in the making.
The James Madison transfer said earlier in the week that success was the expectation when he followed Cignetti to Indiana. The only difference between last year’s high-leverage games and this year’s, he said, was the belief that the defense could hold its own.
“This is what Indiana football is now,” Fisher said Tuesday. “We’re going to play in these big games and expect great outcomes.”
After his expectation became reality, Fisher used his postgame press conference to campaign for Coach Cignetti and the Indiana program.
“A lot of people asked, ‘Why do you follow Coach Cignetti instead of other schools?'” he said. “This is why. Complete buy-in and complete trust of what Coach Cig is doing here. If you do things like that and it leads to wins like this.”
Fisher arrived in Bloomington in December of 2023 when Indiana football was at the bottom of the Big Ten. Not bogged down by the program with the most losses in history, he set out to change the way people thought.
“All this team knew was losing football,” he said. “I think we did a great job as soon as we got here in changing the way Indiana thinks.”
The shift in mindset, more than anything, will define Fisher’s legacy at Indiana.
When his two-year career ends this season, his name won’t reside on the captain’s board in the north end of Memorial Stadium.
Instead, his name will be etched in history as the most influential player in Indiana’s rise from college football afterthought to ascending powerhouse.
See More: Football