After Indiana's brutal semifinal beatdown of Oregon, can Miami stop this freight train?

ATLANTA — The air horn at Mercedes-Benz Stadium blasted for the first time Friday night after just 11 seconds. It’s a distinct, piercing sound with a unique local story, ringing through the sky here after every touchdown.

This city began to sprout up from the ground nearly two centuries ago because it is where the Western & Atlantic railroad made its last stop. With a stake hammered into the ground, they originally called it Terminus — the end of the line.

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Since erecting this modern football palace nine years ago and adding the train horn to commemorate how it all began, nearly every great college football team has come through Atlanta on its way to a national title.

But none have embodied that sound quite like Indiana.

Sleek and efficient, powerful and unrelenting, the Indiana Hoosiers — yes, the Indiana Hoosiers — are barreling down the tracks like a locomotive running late for a date with destiny, blowing that horn as a warning to any creature in its path.

Hey, after 139 years of mostly bad Indiana football, what’s another 10 days to become the most mesmerizing national champion we’ve ever seen?

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Perhaps the Jan. 19 national championship game against Miami will become something other than a Hoosier coronation. But after Indiana’s tour de force through the College Football Playoff, including a savage 56-22 beatdown of Oregon here in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, rarely have we encountered a college football team that looks and feels more inevitable than this one.

“They’re complete,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said. “They do a lot, and they do it really, really well. There’s not a weakness in their game. They run the ball well, they stop the run well, they throw the ball well, they defend the pass well, they've been good on special teams. They obviously have a ton of belief, and deservedly so. They’re really good.”

Oregon, it turned out, never really had a chance.

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When these two teams played in mid-October, with Indiana winning 30-20 on the road in Autzen Stadium, the game was competitive enough to make a dramatic rematch seem plausible.

But it took 11 seconds to realize Indiana football has subsequently evolved into something different. It is now a weapon sharpened for dissection, a machine built for humiliation, deployed with confidence and precision as its coach stalks the sideline with an eternal expression of annoyance.

On the first play from scrimmage, Indiana cornerback D’Angelo Ponds — one of the many players who followed coach Curt Cignetti from James Madison to Indiana two years ago — read the eyes of Oregon quarterback Dante Moore, jumped the route and snagged a pick-six to trip that air horn for the first time.

Then Indiana did it four more times before the first half concluded, each one chipping away at Oregon’s belief until it became a myth. By the time both teams went to the locker room with the Hoosiers leading 35-7, the only point of comparison for a CFP semifinal in this building was LSU’s 63-28 win over Oklahoma six years ago.

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Since that season, 2019 LSU has remained the gold standard for modern-era college football dominance, a team so ruthless in the way it attacked opponents that most realized after awhile they never had a chance in the first place.

Indiana is one more performance like this from taking their crown.

Does Miami even have a prayer?

“A lot of people [who doubted us] really don't know our team,” Cignetti said. “They don't know what we're made of, what we got, and I get it. There was a lot of skepticism after last year that we were a fluke. That team did a lot of great things and got it all started. We’ve just built off our successes, and we've won some big games on the road, and it helps when you have a quarterback play his best football when the game's online in the fourth quarter. And so, you know, here we are.”

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Here they are, indeed.

Player for player, the Hurricanes will believe they’re the better team based on recruiting rankings, physical size and NFL draft stock. But so did Oregon and Alabama, which lost to the Hoosiers by a combined 69 points in this playoff.

With Indiana, it’s not about the measurables. All season long, the Hoosiers have been a nuclear missile of execution and attitude, mocking anyone who dared not believe a program with a litany of laments and losing seasons could turn into this juggernaut practically overnight.

It was the seventh time against an FBS opponent this year Indiana has won by 30 or more points, and at every turn, they’ve thirsted for more. Beating Ohio State to become Big Ten champs for the first time since 1967? Not enough. A Rose Bowl romp over Alabama? They expected it long before we realized it was possible.

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Even when this game against Oregon was well in hand in the fourth quarter, Indiana kept delivering indignities. Only after one final 24-yard touchdown run by Kaelon Black, which drew the slightest smile from Cignetti’s lips with 5:14 to go, had Indiana’s appetite been satisfied. For a little while, anyway.

“Our philosophy is to attack,” Cignetti said. “The reason we are where we are is because we prepared the right way, and that's why we've been able to meet the challenge and put it on the field.”

And when the game finally ended, it looked like the most perfunctory of Indiana’s three big celebrations this postseason. This wasn’t like the relief of conquering the Big Ten or the sheer joy of reducing college football’s most iconic brand to a bystander in Pasadena. This was the moment before the moment, the one that seems poised to stamp Indiana as the greatest turnaround story maybe in the history of American sports.

“I don’t think there’s any time to celebrate because this is what everybody dreams of,” Mendoza said.

Now just one game remains as the Indiana train rolls through Atlanta, headed to Miami at maximum speed. To Terminus and beyond.