From bad football and perfect basketball to a 'miracle' season: Don Fischer's journey with Indiana

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Don Fischer never saw this coming.

The play-by-play voice of Indiana basketball and football was behind the microphone a half-century ago when the Hoosiers — the basketball Hoosiers, coached by Bob Knight — won the 1976 national title with a perfect 32-0 record.

And Monday, he described for listeners how the Hoosiers' football team matched that feat of becoming an undefeated national champion. Indiana beat Miami 27-21 at Hard Rock Stadium for the College Football Playoff national championship, with the Hoosiers becoming the first 16-0 team in major college football since Yale in 1894.

“From my perspective as a broadcaster, that’s the ultimate — to be a part of something, a national champion,” Fischer said in the Hoosiers' radio booth a couple of hours before kickoff Monday. “And now I’ve got a chance to do the same thing in football. I mean, it’s a special night for me.”

It got more special a few hours later, when Fischer got to make the call he's waited 50 years to say.

“The rags to riches story for Indiana football comes to conclusion and they are the national champions of 2026,” Fischer said after Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza hit the ground for the final play. “What a football team! What a football team! And this crowd goes crazy here tonight. The confetti starts to fly.”

Fischer has seen some things in his time as the voice of Indiana football. Most of those things were, well, bad.

There was a stretch of 24 seasons during which the Hoosiers managed exactly one winning record — and that was just a 7-6 mark in 2007. There was an 0-11 year. There was an 83-20 loss at Wisconsin. There was a 62-0 loss at Iowa. There was a 28-game losing streak against ranked opponents.

“I've seen a lot of bad football,” Fischer said.

Then came Curt Cignetti, who is now 27-2 in his two seasons at Indiana and a national champion.

Fischer got introduced to Cignetti during the coach's infamous “Purdue sucks ... so does Michigan and Ohio State! Go IU!” speech that he gave during an Indiana-Maryland basketball game. Fischer's broadcast aired Cignetti's remarks live from midcourt during a timeout.

“I just started laughing," Fischer said. “Nobody’s ever said that in Indiana before, you know? And I said, ‘This is something different.’ So, from that point forward, I was intrigued by the guy.”

Cignetti, for his part, loves the Knight comparisons. Cignetti isn't afraid to say what's on his mind, with little concern for repercussions. Knight was the same way. They aren't carbon copies — to the best of all knowledge, Cignetti has not thrown a chair across a field — but it's easy to see parallels.

Also, they both win.

“I was a big Bob Knight fan as a little kid,” Cignetti said. “I liked sort of the shenanigans and the faces at the press conferences and throwing the chair across the court. I thought that was pretty cool. And the guy I bought my house from was a big friend of Bob Knight, actually.”

Fischer started going to Cignetti's practices shortly after the new coach came to Indiana, to watch what makes him tick. He saw Cignetti was spending as much time, if not more, coaching his assistants than he did coaching players. He was the CEO, which is what he learned in four years working under Nick Saban at Alabama.

Fischer would get asked how he thought Cignetti would do. He predicted Cignetti would win big.

“I knew he was going to win. I could tell,” Fischer said. “You can tell if you’ve been around long enough that the coach has got it or if he doesn’t got it. I could after watching those practices in the spring that he had it.”

And after more than 2,000 games, his voice echoing across the state of Indiana, Fischer had a chance at reliving those perfect memories of 1976.

“How do you get to this place in two years' time and get to the playoff both years and get to the national championship game in the second year?” Fischer said. “It's a miracle.”

AP National Writer Eddie Pells contributed to this report.

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Stephanie and Francis Marshalleck hold a sign before the College Football Playoff national championship game between Miami and Indiana, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Fans arrive for the College Football Playoff national championship game between Miami and Indiana, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Fans arrive for the College Football Playoff national championship game between Miami and Indiana, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court sentenced a man who admitted assassinating former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to life imprisonment on Wednesday. The case has revealed decades of cozy ties between Japan’s governing party and a controversial South Korean church.

Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, earlier pleaded guilty to killing Abe in July 2022 during his election campaign speech in the western city of Nara.

Abe, one of Japan’s most influential politicians, was serving as a regular lawmaker after leaving the prime minister's job when he was killed in 2022 while campaigning in the western city of Nara. It shocked a nation with strict gun control.

Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, pleaded guilty to murder in the trial that started in October. The Nara District Court announced Wednesday that it had issued a guilty verdict and sentenced Yamagami to life in prison, as prosecutors requested.

Yamagami said he killed Abe after seeing a video message the former leader sent to a group affiliated with the Unification Church. He added that his goal was to hurt the church, which he hated, and expose its ties with Abe, investigators have said.

Prosecutors demanded life imprisonment for Yamagami, while his lawyers sought a sentence of no more than 20 years, citing his troubles as the child of a church adherent. Japanese law authorizes the death penalty in murder cases, but prosecutors do not usually request it unless at least two people are killed.

The revelation of close ties between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the church caused the party to pull back from the church. It also prompted investigations that ended with a court decision that stripped the church's Japanese branch of its tax-exempt religious status and ordered it dissolved. The church has since appealed, pending a decision.

The killing also led the National Police Agency to increase police protection of dignitaries.

Abe was shot on July 8, 2022, while giving a speech outside a train station in Nara. In footage captured by television cameras, two gunshots ring out as the politician raises his fist. He collapses holding his chest, his shirt smeared with blood. Officials say Abe died almost instantly.

Yamagami was captured on the spot. He said he initially planned to kill the leader of the Unification Church, but switched targets to Abe because of the difficulty of getting close to the leader.

He told the court last year that he chose Abe as a figure who exemplified the connection between Japanese politics and the church, according to NHK.

Yamagami, apologized to Abe's widow, Akie Abe, in an earlier court session, saying he had no grudge against his family and that he had no excuse to defend him, NHK said.

Yamagami’s case also brought attention to the children of Unification Church adherents in Japan, and influenced a law meant to restrict malicious donation solicitations by religious and other groups.

Thousands of people signed a petition requesting leniency for Yamagami, and others have sent care packages to his relatives and the detention center where he’s being housed.

FILE - People offer prayers for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Zojoji temple in Tokyo, Japan, July 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama, File)