MIAMI, Fla. — There are storylines galore in Monday night's College Football Playoff national championship game, and they're all bursting at the seams.

You've got No. 1-ranked Indiana, the losingest program in college football history before Curt Cignetti arrived two years now. Now they are 15-0 and on the verge of their first national championship in the sport, led by a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback — Fernando Mendoza — who grew up less than a mile from the University of Miami campus. 

Define irony? How about playing your hometown school in your home town for all the marbles? Amazing.

And for Miami, the once proud program that won five national titles from 1983 to 2002 is back in business again after 24 years of irrelevance. 

The game is at 7:30 p.m. ET and ESPN is televising the game. And for play-by-play announcer Chris Fowler, it doesn't get any better than this. 

“It’s a dream to have a collision of these two stories, man,'' Fowler said during media day on Saturday. "It’s the most unlikely championship matchup that I can recall, and not just in the playoff era. I go back four decades because neither team was expected to be here. 

“In recent years, one team is sort of predictable. Georgia, Alabama or Ohio State or something. Neither team was expected to be here. Indiana was 100-to-1 to start the season, and Miami was 100-to-1 on selection day when the bracket came out. The long odds, the years of futility, the joy of the Indiana folks which was amazing to see at the Rose Bowl, and now the joy of the folks here in Miami who waited 20 years for their team to be relevant again.''

The obvious storylines circle around Mendoza, who's father grew up with Miami coach Mario Cristobal and played high school football together at Miami Columbus High School. Both are of Cuban descent, too, which makes that a big deal here in South Florida.

“The fact that Mendoza’s dad played with Cristobal and they live a mile from campus, you can’t script that. If you did, no one would believe it,'' Fowler said.

Cignetti is a huge part of all of this, too, Fowler said. He took an Indiana team that went 3-24 in the Big Ten under Tom Allen from 2021 to 2023, and gone 17-1 in league play since. He also led that past No. 1-ranked Ohio State to win their first-ever Big Ten Championship Game.

He's completely changed how people perceive college football now, and has shown that anything — even lowly Indiana being good — is possible.

“He’s shown what’s possible. He’s blown up the idea that you have to decades of tradition, that you have to take these predictable, methodical steps. Indiana has skipped a lot of steps,'' Fowler said. "You’ve gone from doormat, most losses, worst winning percentage in the Power 4, all those things that Indiana fans have lived and are tiring of hearing about.

“Now you’ve zoomed to not just winning, but destroying and dominating. How do you go from Cinderella to juggernaut in just two years? He’s shown what’s possible using the tools that are available spectacularly. It doesn’t mean it’s easy to duplicate, but he’s shown that it’s possible.

“It’s put a lot of pressure on teams everywhere. In the SEC they saw Vanderbilt succeed, now in the Big Ten, if Indiana can do that, what are we doing at Iowa and Wisconsin and Michigan State, where they have some tradition and won some stuff. Why have we fallen behind the Hoosiers?

“That puts pressure on AD’s at a lot of programs to make the right hire. He puts a lot of pressure on a lot of programs to win now.’’

Here's how to watch the game, plus three newsy nuggets to know.

Who: No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers (15-0) vs. No. 10 Miami Hurricanes (13-2)
What: College Football Playoff national championship game
When: 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday, Jan. 19
Where: Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens, Fla.
TV: ESPN
TV announcers: Chris Fowler (play-by-play), Kirk Herbstreit (analyst), Holly Rowe and Molly McGrath (sideline)
Radio: Indiana Hoosiers Sports Network, Sirius XM (Channel 84)
Weather: It's going to be a perfect weather night for football, but it's cold by South Florida standards. Clear skies and temperatures right around 60 degrees at kickoff. 
Point spread: Indiana is a 7.5-point favorite over Miami on Monday, and the over/under is 47.5 points, according to the Fanduel.com gambling website. Indiana opened as a 7.5-point favorite as well, and the line did tick up to 8.5 before settling back down to the original line on Sunday.
Series history:  The two teams have played twice, but not in 60 years. Both teams have win in the series. Miami won 14-7 on Oct. 21, 1966 in Miami, and Indiana won the first matchup 28-14 on Oct. 23, 1964. 
Playoff run thus far: Indiana earned the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff and got a first-round bye. The Hoosiers beat Alabama 38-3 in the quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., and then smashe Oregon 56-22 in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta.  Miami earned the No. 10 seed — the final at-large selection — and won at No. 7 Texas A&M, beat No. 2 Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl and No. 6 Ole Miss in the Fiesta Bowl. They won their quarterfinal game 23-0 over No. 4 seed Texas Tech at the Orange Bowl  

NO XAVIER LEWIS FOR FIRST HALF: Miami's top defensive back, Xavier Lewis, will not be available for the first half of Monday night's game after getting called for targeting in the fourth quarter of their win over Ole Miss on Jan. 8. Cristobal called the suspension unfair. "We feel it was unjustly administered, and now it impacts the last game of the season," Cristobal said Sunday. "We do have the ability, again, as an officiating crew and the powers that be to revisit that to give every team due process and their best ability to compete in this game."

CIGNETTI STAYING FOCUSED: In the final press conference before the game, Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said all the feel-good stories about his team can't go to their head. There is still one more game to play, and the celebrations can come afterward. "I think leading up to this game, there's been a lot of pro Indiana hype, a lot of rat poison out there," Cignetti said.  "I happened to see (ESPN's) Holly Rowe's thing on social media this morning about our guys hugging each other at the end of practice. It is a close team. I've witnessed quite a bit of sentimentalism throughout the week from some of our seniors who we've been with quite a long time. I think it's time to sharpen the saw now. Throw those warm fuzzies out the door, that sentimentalism. It's time to go play a game against a great opponent. We've got to have a sharp edge going into this game. You don't go to war with warm milk and cookies."

INTERTWINED UNBEATENS: Indiana has a chance to be the first team to go 16-0 in the modern era, and they can do it on the 50-year anniversary of Indiana's basketball team going undefeated in 1976, winning all 32 games under Bob Knight, the first of his three national titles at the school. "It really has no effect on what's going to take place here (Monday) night," Cignetti said. "But it was 50 years ago, and if we're able to climb that mountain, it'll be a unique coincidence. I was a big Bob Knight fan as a little kid, 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."