Indiana’s Curt Cignetti is the curve-killing coach who ruined it for everyone
Indiana coach Curt Cignetti may have helped get a lot of coaches paid, but he’s going to get even more fired.
If Cignetti, without access to the piles of money and “resources” offered by Ohio State, Michigan, Texas A&M, Texas and the other rich bloods, can be good in football at Indiana University and win a national title, what’s your team’s excuse?
“I think to look back at what happened to Indiana previous to us coming, 10, 20, 50 years ago, strictly lacked a commitment from the top,” Cignetti said Tuesday morning in Miami, the day after IU defeated Miami to win the national title. “That’s it, plain and simple. Nothing else. And we have a commitment, OK.”
Plenty of schools have commitment from the top of the chancellor’s office, down to the janitor’s closet in the football locker room. While it’s a necessity to win, it doesn’t guarantee a winner.
What Cignetti in 2025 did to the sport of college football is what Bob Stoops did at Oklahoma in 2000, times 4 million and 10.
Bob Stoops once ‘ruined it for everybody’
When Stoops was hired to coach Oklahoma following the 1998 season, the Sooners were a tarnished team whose nickname no longer meant much of anything in college football other than “Dead Dynasty.”
Long gone were the dominant days of Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer, the latter of whose tenure ended in 1988 amid NCAA scandal. From 1989 to ‘98, the Sooners had three coaches: Gary Gibbs, Howard Schnellenberger and John Blake.
That trio produced five consecutive seasons that did not yield one winning record, a sin if you’re a Sooners football coach. After Blake was fired and replaced by Stoops, he at least put gauze on the open wound by finishing with a 7-5 record.
In his second season, the Sooners finished undefeated, and won their first national title since 1985. Over the next decade, Stoops’ title-winning season in 2000 reset the timelines for new coaches at major programs all over the country.
And then Curt Cignetti had to ruin it for everyone.
The Curt Cignetti Standard
The threat of Cignetti leaving Indiana in the fall of ‘25 started a trickle down of money that fell on coaching staffs all over the U.S., but it came with a Neiman Marcus-sized price tag. We gave you all this money — now do what he’s doing, or we’ll find the guy who can.
Books, movies and documentaries will be produced to tell the story of the former Rice quarterbacks coach who turned the worst football program in America to its best in two seasons.
The charming story out of Bloomington, Indiana, written by the native of Pittsburgh, is hell for his colleagues, many of whom are dealing with this before IU defeated Ohio State in the Big Ten title game, popped Alabama in the Rose Bowl, crushed Oregon in the Peach Bowl and beat Miami on Monday night for the national title in consecutive games.
Cignetti is the student in the chemistry class who wrecks it for his “friends” by scoring a 100 out of 100 on the final exam, while the rest of the students are lucky to finish with a 63. He’s the curve-ruiner whom everyone begrudgingly respects, but loathes behind their back.
The 2025 coaching cycle was more like a cyclone that ravaged coaching staffs from Baton Rouge to Blacksburg to Berkeley. More than 30 FBS head coaching jobs became available, many of which were created by fired coaches who could not come close to Cignetti’s performance.
One misnomer to Indiana’s success it that its roster is a result of tens of millions of NIL dollars spent by desperate donors, namely IU alum and former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Not true.
The incoming class of recruits and transfers, led by former TCU quarterback Josh Hoover, will be the ones who benefit the most financially to IU’s success. The Hoosiers were not so loaded with cash they could outspend rival programs like Ohio State and Michigan, two teams they beat in 2025.
What Cignetti and IU did better than any other program in America was to pick older, quality transfers and selectively plug them in various positions. Quarterback Fernando Mendoza was a two-year player at the University of California who had earned his business degree from Cal before he transferred for one of the greatest one-year tenures in the history of major college football at IU.
IU’s roster is not flush with NFL-caliber talent, but older guys who have played a lot and know what they’re doing.
Unlike Stoops, who won at a school whose reputation was winning, Cignetti proved that you can be good at football, and win a national title, at a place whose reputation was losing.
By doing so, he ruined it for everyone else because — what’s your excuse why your team still stinks?
This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
