No really, how did Indiana football get so good so fast? Inside Curt Cignetti's turnaround
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Scott Dochterman
The Hoosiers’ rise was once hailed as a program-building miracle of biblical scale, but with each victory, their dominance gets more real.
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana’s recent ascension from perennial punching bag to national title contender is a college football rags-to-riches story for which there is no natural comparison.
Before November, Indiana had the most losses in college football history. Across 125 seasons before Curt Cignetti was hired in December 2023, none of its 23 coaches left the program with a winning conference record. Only twice had the Hoosiers claimed at least a share of the Big Ten title, most recently a three-way tie in 1967. Generations of administrative dysfunction, low football revenue, poor recruiting and a department premium on basketball turned Indiana football into a wasteland.
But that time is known as B.C. — Before Cignetti. The present bears no reminders of Indiana’s ignominious past, only the hopes and aspirations of one of the sport’s greatest turnarounds.
This year, the Hoosiers are the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff, boasting a 13-0 record. They beat Ohio State for the Big Ten championship, and quarterback Fernando Mendoza won this year’s Heisman Trophy as the nation’s top player. Cignetti has picked up national coach of the year honors after both seasons and has compiled a combined 24-2 record.
At Indiana, the Big Ten’s favorite homecoming opponent? Really?
“They could make a movie out of this,” said Gerry DiNardo, who coached Indiana from 2002 to 2004. “People would say, yeah, that doesn’t happen in real life.”
The Hoosiers’ rise was once hailed as a program-building miracle of biblical scale, but with each victory, the reality of their success sets in further. IU’s championship model leans on modern talent acquisition methods and old-school coaching techniques, with a reliance on fundamentals that helps everyone on the roster improve. Just ask the quarterback who just won the first Heisman Trophy in school history:
“As a player, it’s two different Fernando Mendozas. You can ask any coach or player on staff. Even some of the players were like, ‘Bro, when we saw you in spring, there’s no way we ever thought this was possible.’”
Now the Hoosiers are favored against Alabama, college football’s signature program over the last two decades, in a quarterfinal clash at the sport’s most iconic venue, the Rose Bowl. Perhaps only Northwestern, which now holds a three-game “lead” over Indiana for most losses, can claim a similar transformation three decades ago. Those Wildcats played in a Rose Bowl, but they never contended for a national title. These Hoosiers have a real path toward hoisting the crystal football next month in Miami.
A 13-10 win over Ohio State earned the Hoosiers their first conference title since the 1967 season. (Aaron Doster / Imagn Images)
Cignetti’s plan started with his coaching staff. He brought five assistants with him from James Madison, including defensive coordinator Bryant Haines and offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan. They maintained their system and landed personnel capable of running it at college football’s highest level.
Defensively, Indiana’s four down linemen combine physicality with technique and plenty of stunts. Of their seven primary defensive linemen this year, five were Group of 5 transfers and a sixth, defensive end Kellan Wyatt, came from Maryland. Yet the Hoosiers racked up 112 tackles for loss, the second-most in the FBS.
Assistants from two other Big Ten programs praised the collective play of the Hoosiers’ defense rather than the scheme. One mentioned that only two of those seven defenders are taller than 6-foot-1, yet they play bigger because there’s no let-up in effort.
On offense, Cignetti provides Mendoza with plenty of run-pass options with play-action and quick passes but also incorporates drop-back passing and zone running plays. It’s a system based on execution rather than advanced concepts.
Cignetti’s passing system uses every blade of fake grass as spacing and separation — as he said, “You got 52 yards of field, and you got to use all 52-plus of them” — and Indiana’s pre-snap alignments and precise route depths often put defensive backs in conflict and leave open windows in zone coverage. That has turned outside receiver Elijah Sarratt and slot receiver Omar Cooper Jr. into one of college football’s best receiving tandems. Then when there’s man coverage, Indiana attacks downfield.
“I would consider what Oregon does much more exotic and much more diverse than what Indiana is doing offensively,” said a Big Ten assistant coach, given anonymity in exchange for his candor. “They’re not trying to out-scheme guys. They’re trying to play unbelievably, fundamentally well and harder and tougher than their opponents. And their scheme allows them to do that because it’s not a bunch of Star Wars out there.”
Indiana’s offense doesn’t need to be flashy to find success. The running game averages a Big Ten-best 221 yards per game, thanks in part to Cignetti’s decision to retain offensive line coach Bob Bostad, the only holdover from Tom Allen’s 2023 staff.
Bostad, who spent 12 years across two stints at Wisconsin, has built some of college football’s most physical and mechanically sound units. It’s a blocking system built on walling off defenders and eliminating space, which leads the runner to use his vision to generate explosive plays.
This year’s unit, in which four of the seven primary offensive linemen are transfers, has cut down on tackles for loss and sacks allowed while increasing its yards per carry despite playing better competition. Left tackle Carter Smith, a Bostad recruit, earned Big Ten Offensive Lineman of the Year, and the Hoosiers were named a finalist for the Joe Moore Award, which goes to the nation’s best offensive line.
“What we saw this year was a unit that played consistently and embodied the teamwork aspect of our criteria, as well as anybody in the country,” said Joe Moore Award founder and College Football Hall of Fame offensive lineman Aaron Taylor. “They were so good at working together to pick up stunts, blitz and movement, both in the run and in the pass.
“It was magnificent how consistently they played. And when given the opportunity to be physical or to take a shot, they took it.”
But Mendoza, the Cal transfer who picked the Hoosiers over interest from Georgia and others last winter, is the difference between simply reaching the Playoff and potentially winning it. His numbers (2,980 passing yards, 33 passing touchdowns, six rushing scores) put him in the Heisman discussion, but his arm strength and intangibles showed up in the four key wins away from home that defined Indiana’s season.
He stared down an all-out blitz and threw a 49-yard touchdown pass to Sarratt with 1:28 left to beat Iowa. He shook off a fourth-quarter pick six to lead two scoring drives in a midseason statement victory at Oregon. Against Penn State, Mendoza put together an 80-yard drive inside the final two minutes that culminated in a dazzling 7-yard touchdown reception by Cooper with 36 seconds left. And against Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game, Mendoza launched a 33-yard fade to Charlie Becker on third-and-6 at his own 24 just before the two-minute warning, a conversion that essentially clinched the Hoosiers’ first Big Ten title since 1967.
“Compared to (2024 starter Kurtis Rourke), he’s got a much stronger arm, and he’s a lot more athletic,” a second Big Ten assistant said. “He brings a little bit of the scramble ability into play, which really wasn’t there last year. He can throw to all areas of the field.”
Mendoza has established himself as a candidate to go No. 1 in the 2026 NFL Draft thanks to the magic he has worked at the helm of Cignetti’s offense. (Rich Janzaruk / Herald-Times / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
Indiana’s initial transfer portal haul flipped the program’s fortunes. In 2023 Cignetti’s final season at James Madison, a young and talented Dukes roster finished 11-1, and 13 of those players followed him to Indiana. They include All-Big Ten performers like Sarratt, linebacker Aiden Fisher, cornerback D’Angelo Ponds and defensive linemen Tyrique Tucker and Mikail Kamara.
“You’re rebuilding the house, so to speak, and you start with the foundation and build it up,” Cignetti said. “It’s more process oriented. It’s standards, expectations, consistency, performance and accountability.”
“Right away, your locker room is right. I mean right away,” DiNardo said. “The overused word is culture. It might take two years to build a culture in the locker room. He brought it with him.”
The James Madison transfers immediately set the tone with player-led accountability. Their talent was well beyond what anyone expected from a Group of 5 program, in part because of how they developed at James Madison.
Cignetti chose experienced, productive transfers to join his James Madison players, and many adopted Cignetti’s mindset. Of the Hoosiers’ 34 core players on offense and defense, 23 are former transfers. The holdovers, long tired of Indiana’s losing history, happily bought in.
“There’s a certain kind of guy that I just won’t take,” Cignetti said. “A guy’s gotta love ball and have some ankle, knee, hip flexibility, and a certain level of athleticism. And then habits are important. How bad does he want it? … You’ve got a role in helping him develop. He’s got to be coachable, too.”
Every step along the way, criticism has fueled Indiana’s ascension: of the players’ underrecruited high school and G5 pedigrees, of their Year 1 success, of Indiana’s hapless history. When the Hoosiers became Big Ten champions, they threw it back at their detractors.
“This kind of was the final nail in the coffin for any of the Indiana doubters, Curt Cignetti doubters, the Hoosier doubters,” said linebacker Isaiah Jones.
This year, the Hoosiers have earned respect and made believers out of cynics, in part because of how they navigated an unforgiving Big Ten schedule.
“Coming out of Year 1, I think there were a lot of coaches, myself included, and coaches throughout our league were a little bit skeptical,” the first Big Ten assistant said. “All everybody talked about was the loss to Ohio State (in November 2024), and like, ‘Are they really for real?’ And then they turn around and they do it this year.”
Indiana's key statistical top-10s
Category
Indiana
FBS rank
Points per game
41.9
4th
Yards per play
7.09
T-7th
Third-down conversion %
55.8
1st
Points allowed per game
10.8
2nd
Yards allowed per game
257.2
4th
Turnover margin
Plus-17
T-1st
Penalty yards per game
28.5
3rd
Avg. time of possession
33:22
6th
Indiana’s rise from the Big Ten basement to its penthouse also has made their competitors’ jobs more difficult. Over the 25 years preceding Cignetti’s arrival, no Big Ten school and only three power-conference schools lost more games than Indiana. Over the last two seasons, no team has fewer losses than Indiana’s two. That’s with 68 percent of their core performers coming from the transfer portal. With strong financial support from its fan base to recruit and retain top athletes, the once-downtrodden Hoosiers might even have staying power.
“They’ve just raised the expectations for everyone else because it’s never been done before,” the second Big Ten assistant coach said. “You can say, ‘Yeah, we should do that, too.’ Well, if it was that easy, it would have been done before.”
