MORGANTOWN — “Tentacles”

Sounds like a title for a horror movie, right?

Truth is, there once was one in 1977, an Italian-American horror film about a killer octopus occupying a seaside town, starring a rather strong, all-star cast — Henry Fonda, John Huston, Shelly Winters — for this genre of movie that was little more than a ripoff of the hit movie “Jaws” from a year earlier.

In a way it would be the perfect title for the movie that is sure to come out of Indiana’s stunningly rapid climb to the top of the college football world, for seldom has such a national championship victory had as many tentacles that reached out far and wide as did Coach Curt Cignetti’s miracle with his bigger — and better — than life quarterback, Fernando Mendoza.

They reached from Bloomington, Indiana; to Morgantown, West Virginia; from Miami, Florida, to Berkeley, California; from Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Harrisonville, Virginia.

“Hoosiers II”

Maybe, but the tentacles enveloped so many people, being wider spread than even the Mendoza family tree, which drew 850 relatives to its last reunion in 2022 and while, according to its genealogical flow chart showed 2,836 descendants, a number sure to grow in folklore into the millions now that deed has been completed with a heart-throbbing 27-21 victory over Miami on the Hurricanes’ home field on Monday night in the championship game.

The story involves the main character in Cignetti, who grew up in Morgantown and attended Morgantown High as the son of a former West Virginia coach, Frank Cignetti, who found his way to the College Football Hall of Fame for his years at Indiana, Pa., where his Curt would follow and get his head coaching career rolling.

Morgantown had to be a big part of this for it comes in the same school year that the Morgantown Mohigans won a state championship.

A coincidence?

If it is, it is a perfect one for the movie.

And then there is WVU, where he was a backup quarterback. A teammate on one of his teams was Rich Rodriguez, who this year began his rebuild of the WVU team he had brought to the brink of a national championship 17 years earlier and which he believes he can get back to that prominence, although his 4-8 start was a long way from Cignetti’s 11-2 record.

Then, to add to the Morgantown and West Virginia connection, as Cignetti reached the pinnacle of college football, conducting the pregame shows was the man who occupied that spot for so long, Nick Saban, joined by the one-time WVU placekicker under Rodriguez when he nearly won the title, Pat McAfee.

And finally, this past year Gene Hackman died, his legend complete in Indiana, just as Cignetti was starting his.

This is not stuff you can make up.

And Cignetti’s words from two seasons back were very similar to words Saban had said recently on McAfee’s TV show.

This is from Cignetti’s introductory press conference at Indiana: ” … I’ve never really looked at (recruiting) stars ever, honestly. It’s kind of like I get so focused on certain things, like in this one particular case, evaluation. I guess these stars have been around for a long time. I have never, ever looked at a star.”

And what was it Saban said about four- and five-star recruits?

“We never ever looked, and I know Cig (Curt Cignetti) doesn’t either, at how many stars a guy has because I think what you all need to do is look at who’s giving out the stars,” Saban said. “They don’t know their [rears] from sand in their hands. Why would you, as a coach, depend on somebody who’s not even a coach, evaluating players to give them stars? I say all the time, Josh Jacobs had no stars. Damien Harris was a five-star. They were both really good players, don’t get me wrong, but Josh Jacobs was a first-round draft pick, and Damien Harris was a third-round pick. Josh Jacobs is still playing, Damien Harris is not.”

Which brings us back to Mendoza, the quarterback who just finished a season in which he won not only the national title but the Heisman Trophy and it was a touchdown run — not a pass — on fourth and five on a quarterback draw in which he refused to be stopped that won the game.

Stars? They don’t matter when you have a kid like him, a kid from Miami, no less, and a kid who didn’t have those stars and would have loved to have played for Miami.

“I got declined to walk-on at the University of Miami. Full circle moment here playing in Miami,” he admitted.

So he did it for Indiana and the players he played with.

“I’m going to die for my team out there and I know they are going to die for me,” he said.

Cignetti came to Indiana with a plan. It really wasn’t much different than what Rich Rodriguez was doing when he came back to WVU and declared he would bring a “hard edge” brand of football back to the Mountaineers.

“We’re going to change the culture, the mindset, the expectation level, and improve the brand of Indiana Hoosier football,” Cignetti said during that introductory press conference. “There will be no self-imposed limitations on what we can accomplish. It will be a day-by-day process that hinges on being focused on the present moment and improving as much daily as possible to put yourself in the best position tomorrow.”

And, like Rodriguez, Cignetti left no doubt who was in charge.

Just as Rodriguez said his team would play with a “hard edge”, that they would be in shape, that they would play fast and would be tough and that would be “non-negotiable”, so, too, did Cignetti in that first press conference.

“It’s how we do everything as coaches, players, everybody in the organization. And there is one leader, and he’s standing here — I am standing — and everybody follows that lead. That’s one of the keys to success is we have everybody thinking alike,”Cignetti said.

“When I start talking about making sure we got the edge of winning complacency, everybody’s mindset is where it needs to be. It starts the second I walk in that staff room because it’s a top-down approach. It starts with me, and I make sure those 10 [assistant coaches] are thinking like we need them to think because it’s going to filter down to players.”