Sailors aboard the USS Indiana took a group photo celebrating an improbable and dramatic championship win Monday night by their namesake state’s top college football team, the Indiana University Hoosiers. The photo was posted to a Facebook page run by the ship’s commissioning committee, a civilian nonprofit that raises funds to support the Indiana’s crew.
The Hoosiers football team beat the University of Miami Hurricanes, 27-21, in the national championship game. Undefeated all season, the Hoosiers held off Miami with a dramatic final defensive stand to finish 16-0, the first team to reach that mark in over 100 years.
Though Navy submariners pride themselves as the silent service, with virtually no public events or statements within their ranks beyond routine ceremonies, the Hoosier victory was apparently too exciting for the crew to stay completely quiet about.
To celebrate, close to 30 sailors snapped a photo that appears to include Indiana commanding officer Cmdr. Kyle Johnson holding a commemorative football, surrounded by sailors between the ship’s forward hatch and main sail. The group smiles as several in the back of the pack hold up a Hoosiers-style “Indiana” flag.
Sailors recently held up the same flag as it sailed into Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.
The ship moved its homeport to Hawaii in July from Groton, Connecticut, a transplant that some of the sailors may be referencing in the football photo with “hang loose” gestures.
Ray Shearer, who runs the commissioning committee’s Facebook page, said the crew was able to watch “some” of the game, even while underway, though he would not say how the crew had viewed the game or where the ship is. “There’s a lot I can’t say,” Shearer said, but confirmed the photo was taken after the victory.
The Indiana is one of 24 Virginia-class fast attack submarines in the Navy and was commissioned in 2018. Virginia-class ships are the Navy’s newest and most numerous submarines, primarily designed for anti-submarine warfare and intelligence gathering.
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According to a Navy fact sheet, the ships carry a crew of close to 130 enlisted sailors and 14 officers, and range between 377 and 460 feet, depending on their variations. The largest ships in the class can displace up to 10,200 long tons, roughly akin to a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser. Virginia-class subs can carry torpedoes and, in some cases, Tomahawk cruise missiles. The ships also train to “lock out” special operations teams, like Green Berets and Navy SEALs, who can swim toward a mission or ride on various underwater delivery vehicles carried on the submarine’s hull.
Each ship costs close to $3 billion and most, though not all, are named for states.
Football records of fleet namesakes
Crews of Navy ships that are named after U.S. cities and states commonly cultivate relationships with officials and institutions in those locales. Indiana crew members visited both Indianapolis and Indiana University in Bloomington in March 2023, Shearer said. The crew picked up the flag and football on the trip. Six months later, the school named then-unknown coach Curt Cignetti to lead its ever-faltering program. The team is 27-2 since.
Three other Virginia-class ships share the names of states whose major public universities have won modern top-tier national football titles: the USS Texas, USS Washington and USS Colorado. Five more ships — the USS North Dakota, USS South Dakota, USS Montana, USS Delaware and USS Massachusetts — can lay similar claims to titles in the sport’s second tier.
This year’s playoffs, which Indiana eventually won, featured an All-Virginia-class “final four.” Eponymous schools for the USS Indiana and the USS Oregon met in one semifinal, while campuses that share names with the USS Mississippi and the ordered-but-not-yet-built USS Miami squared off in the other semifinal.
