Sports leagues often have a set of consistent winners who regularly contend for championships. They may have a history and resources. They are known by all in the sport. They may be disliked by plenty of others whose teams do not have regular success or do not challenge for championships.

Sometimes these hierarchies are upset. Last night was one such occurrence with Indiana University beating Miami to cap the college football playoff. Indiana is the football champion for the first time ever. A basketball school won the football championship. As one commentator summed up how it happened, they concluded that it may never happen again:

All of which makes this a singular moment in the sport. The Indiana football program still has the third most losses of any team in FBS history, and I’m not sensing that Northwestern or Wake Forest is all that close to hanging a championship banner. Maybe, though. College football was a static sport for a long time. The last year a team won its program’s first national title was 1996, when the Florida Gators did it. A new economic structure will create new first-time champs on a quicker timeline than that going forward. It will just never, ever yield a two-year flip job like the one Indiana just put on.

In the recent past, I also remember Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2016. This team had finished second in the top tier once in the distant past (late 1920s) and had fluctuated between the top tier and second tier for decades. But 2015-2016 was a magical season where the team overcame great odds to win the league. Ten years later, they are back in the second tier.

Who is affected by these unusual championship victories? Certainly it is good for supporters of these teams. They will remember this forever. Their team won it all when they typically are not even competing for the top spot. The teams will enjoy this success for years, perhaps with new fans and resources, and with a higher status legacy.

What about the broader public? Perhaps some others will join in for the exciting ride of the unusual championship. How many college football fans joined the Indiana bandwagon from their success the previous year through their just-completed undefeated year? How many fans enjoyed Leicester City beating the top teams that tend to dominate the Premier League?

At the same time, this success does not last forever. Do sports championships change people’s day to day lives? Will the regular powers in the sport reassert their dominance?

Maybe the most enduring legacy will be the hope that any team may have that they too could have these unusual seasons. Get the right coach. Attract the right star player. The top teams might falter. It could all come together for one season. It probably won’t – there can only be one champion each year – but it could. Remember when Indiana or Leicester City or other unexpected champions won it all? The great outlier season could happen. The odds that another unexpected champion could arise have to be greater than 0%, right?

(The 2016 World Series victory by the Chicago Cubs might be a similar unexpected championship – see one comparison to Indiana’s win here. The Cubs’ win led to a large public celebration. For multiple reasons, I did not include them in this post.)