by Kyle Golik
Count me as one who was extremely wrong on Curt Cignetti’s impact with Indiana this season; I picked the Hoosiers to finish just ahead of Purdue in the Big Ten.
Cignetti warned everyone at Big Ten Media Days that we all should look at Indiana as the surprise team in the Big Ten.
“Now, I can tell you, normally at these things I stand up here and we’re picked to win the league. It’s just usually how it’s been. I have been picked next to last twice, which we’re picked 17th out of an 18-team league, and I get it. The two times we were picked next to last, in 2022, we won the conference championship, and in 2017 we inherited an 8-45 team and won eight in a row and played JMU the last game of the year for the conference championship,” Cignetti said. “Now, I’m not into making predictions, that’s just a historical fact. I know you guys have been waiting for me to say something crazy. That wasn’t quite crazy. I think the other point I’d like to make — it was just three seasons ago that Indiana was a touchdown away from winning the Big Ten Conference, three seasons ago.”
While I was wrong about how Indiana would finish, I feel like we have seen this movie before with a coach who comes into a program, has an immediate impact with the infusion of transfers, wins big, but fails to sustain Year 1 success.
Look no further than Southern California’s Lincoln Riley for that movie script.
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Riley became Southern California’s head coach in 2022 and had a transfer portal haul that made the self proclaimed “Portal King” Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin abdicate his throne and bestow the crown on Riley.
Riley was able to bring in notably eventual Heisman Trophy winner quarterback Caleb Williams (Oklahoma), the reigning Biletnikoff Award-winning wide receiver Jordan Addison (Pitt), and steady running back Travis Dye (Oregon) who made the Trojans’ offense so potent they earned a berth in the Pac-12 Championship and a New Year’s Six bowl berth.
This season, Indiana did not add that many blockbuster names that Riley did but they did have the same impact. Of the 46 incoming players that Cignetti had for his 2024 Indiana Hoosiers, 30 were incoming transfers, led notably by quarterback Kurtis Rourke, who finished ninth in Heisman voting.
As Cignetti now embarks on his second season, it isn’t practical, and we will really begin to see if Colorado’s Deion Sanders strategy, where he had 43 transfers, truly works out. With the emphasis Cignetti has, he must begin to establish his base in Indiana.
Cignetti was able to prove in Year 1 that Indiana has access to the College Football Playoff, which is no longer ever in question, but what is in question is can Cignetti win a big game?
I have never been a fan of the trope, and even I am guilty of invoking it, that teams don’t beat anybody. There is a game, there are 85 (soon to be 105) scholarship players on both sides and there is a struggle to compete to win.
For Cignetti’s credit, Indiana won 11 games, a program first, and took care of business for which he should get credit.
It is Cignetti’s mouth that is writing checks that can’t be cashed.
Cignetti’s latest gaffe came on ESPN’s College Gameday, prior to Indiana’s contest in South Bend against Notre Dame: “We don’t just beat top-25 teams, we beat the shit out of them.”
At least Nick Saban had all our backs in his reply to Cignetti: “One thing you didn’t learn from me is all the shit you talk.”
That talk and lack of a big-time resume for Cignetti forces him to push the envelope, but this doesn’t guarantee success. Riley entered his time at Southern California winning 84.6% of his games at Oklahoma with four Big 12 Championships and three College Football Playoff berths.
The instant infusion of talent hasn’t translated for Riley, since the 2022 Pac-12 Championship game appearance and is 14-13 overall. The Trojans have lost 18 players to the portal, notably Miller Moss, Zachariah Branch, Bear Alexander, Khyron Hudson, and Duce Robinson, and, as of this writing, have only four incoming commitments in the transfer portal.
The Big Ten is a tougher league at 18 teams, with Indiana having the No. 14 ranked class so far in the Class of 2025 amongst Big Ten teams and a transfer portal class that isn’t in the Top 40 (both according to 247Sports), I don’t exactly see Indiana repeating this performance next year or the foreseeable future. We might actually need to Google Curt Cignetti at some point because the results won’t be there and eerily, a path we have all seen before.
