Wes Woodward

Grant Wilson had not started a game at Indiana. He came in at halftime today and threw the touchdown that won it. Indiana beat Minnesota 23 to 16 in overtime. Josh Hoover started and was struggling, so Curt Cignetti went to his backup for the second half, and in overtime Wilson threw a 25 yard touchdown pass to end it. That game was also absurd on its own. Minnesota hit a 60 yard field goal with 24 seconds left to go in front. Indiana answered with a 60 yard field goal of its own with 2 seconds left. Then overtime, then Wilson. Now here is the part that makes him worth 500 words. This is Grant Wilson's seventh season of college football. Seventh. It is also his last one. He started at Fordham in 2021 and 2022. He transferred to Old Dominion and started 14 games there. Then in the second week of 2024, against East Carolina, he dislocated his elbow and tore tendons in his triceps and his wrist. He went into the transfer portal after that. Several schools offered him a chance to go be their starting quarterback. He turned all of them down and went to Indiana to be a backup. His explanation was short. It is hard to turn down Curt Cignetti. So he sat. And while he sat, third on the depth chart, he spent his time teaching Fernando Mendoza how to play the position. Mendoza went on to win the Heisman Trophy, and the way Mendoza described him was as a full time quarterback fundamentals coach. Then the NCAA granted Wilson a seventh year. He beat out Tyler Cherry for the backup job again this fall, and he went right back into the same role he had been in all along, which is the one where you prepare all week to play zero snaps. Here is how he talks about that role. "I know my role." He says he embraces it every single day. He calls the whole thing a long journey. Cignetti says Wilson is as good a team player as anybody on that roster, and that he probably wants to coach when he is finished. A man who could have spent the last two years starting somewhere else chose instead to hold a clipboard, teach a Heisman winner his footwork, and wait. Today they finally handed him the thing, in overtime, with everything on it. He threw a touchdown and Indiana won.