Curt Cignetti Drums Up Excitement Around Indiana Football, Now It’s Time To Produce

New Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti spoke with a high level of confidence and set lofty goals for the Hoosiers during Thursday's Big Ten Media Days at Lucas Oil Stadium. With the season right around the corner, it's time to put it all together.

Indiana Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti speaks to the media during the Big Ten football media day at Lucas Oil Stadium. / Robert Goddin-USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Indiana football’s nine wins over the last three years are the fewest in the Big Ten. 

So for new head coach Curt Cignetti, rebuilding the Big Ten’s bottom feeder will take more than just his knowledge of the X’s and O’s. He must instill belief in his players’ minds and rekindle excitement from fans, administration and donors to achieve his lofty goals.

Outlandish to some and inspiring to others, Cignetti has spoken with confidence that’s uncommon around Indiana football and expected only by the now-18 team conference’s top dogs. That messaging started the moment he was introduced on Dec. 1. It continued into spring practices, spanned summer workouts and recruiting visits, and was prominent during Big Ten Media Days on Thursday at Lucas Oil Stadium.

“I know you guys have been waiting for me to say something crazy,” he said.

The first notable moment was when Cignetti brought up the time someone asked him how he’d define success at Indiana.

“I was like, ‘Well, we want to be the best.’ I mean, you don't bring your kids up, ‘Johnny, I want you to be fourth best. I want you to be tenth best.’ Bullshit. We want to be the best.”

Cignetti first revealed that confidence on Dec. 1, the day he was officially introduced as Indiana’s football coach. Following his press conference, Cignetti attended an Indiana men’s basketball game against Maryland at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. 

During a break in action, Cignetti introduced himself to the fans and yelled into a microphone, “Purdue sucks!” The crowd roared, and Cignetti’s next move spoke to his overarching goal, leveling up to recent national champions, “But so does Michigan and Ohio State!”

It’s been almost eight months since then, so Cignetti has had time to reflect on his first impression.

“When you get to be 62, 63, you lose your filter a little bit, right?” He said Thursday.

“And when you’re used to success and you’ve been on campus all day and you detect some things you don’t really like, it kind of gets under your skin a little bit. And we are in the entertainment business. This is entertainment, right? It’s coaching, but it’s entertainment. … I just ramped that up a little bit, I guess. We’ve got 17,000 people in the basketball arena, and I gotta get them excited.” 

“So you know, the first part was easy. But then why stop there and set the bar at 6-6? Our goal, we’re going after these two. We want to be the best. It’s like that thing I talked about with your kids. When you compete, you want to be the best. You can’t have self-imposed limitations. ‘Oh, if we go to a bowl it’s a great year!’ Bullshit. That ain’t the goal. The goal is to be the best, and what you do is you commit to the process and do the things you need to do to be the best you can be and then see where you are at the end.’’

Some may wonder where that confidence comes from. Cignetti often compares his task at Indiana to previous stops at Elon and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In 2011, he took his first head coaching gig at IUP, which meant leaving his wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator position at Alabama under Nick Saban. 

IUP had gone 6-5 and 5-6 the two seasons before his arrival, but Cignetti quickly sparked a turnaround, going 7-3 in his first season and 12-2 the next, with a quarterfinal appearance in the NCAA Division II playoffs. 

Cignetti went 53-17 across six seasons at IUP, and then it was time to rebuild Elon. That program went 2-9 the year before Cignetti took over in 2017, and it hadn’t won more than four games since 2011. But in just two seasons, Cignetti went 8-4 and 6-5.

His career reached new heights at James Madison, where he went 52-9 in five seasons. Even at that historically successful program, Cignetti went 14-2 in his first season in 2019, improving from a 9-4 record in 2018. The Dukes were ranked between No. 1 and No. 8 among FCS schools every week during his first three seasons, and despite moving up to the FBS, they were ranked as high as No. 18 in the AP top-25 poll in 2023. 

A question about Indiana’s in-state rivalry with Purdue, something Cignetti said is great for college football, reminded him of his ultimate goals and success in rivalry games at James Madison.

“We want to be so good we’re a lot of people’s rival,” Cignetti said. “… We had a rival in the Sun Belt. They made Coastal Carolina our rival because they were really catching fire and beating everybody, Jamey Chadwell and them. We beat their ass 47-7 and [56-14].”

While he was more accustomed to his teams being picked to win their conference, Cignetti recalled on Thursday that in both 2017 and 2022, his team was picked to finish second to last. But in 2017, Elon competed for the conference championship in its final regular season game. And in 2022, James Madison similarly shattered expectations by winning the Sun Belt East Division, though it was ineligible to compete in the conference title game due to its first-year transition from the FCS to FBS.

The Big Ten doesn’t do an official preseason poll, but Cleveland.com conducted a preseason media poll. The 27 voters tabbed Indiana No. 17 out of 18 teams for the 2024 season, a familiar position for Cignetti. And he has repeatedly far outperformed the rankings.

“I'm not into making predictions,” Cignetti said. “That's just a historical fact.”

Cignetti’s staff at Indiana features seven coaches from James Madison, including offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan and defensive coordinator Bryant Haines. He hasn’t coached the most of the players on the roster before, but Cignetti hopes continuity with the coaching staff helps quickly impart his desired culture and revitalize the program. 

“We've got a lot of guys accustomed to getting the result,” Cignetti said. “We're very process oriented in terms of what we do: Control the controllables, humble and hungry, be where your feet are, no self-imposed limitations, improve every minute, every hour, every day, every rep, one play at a time. Buy into that, okay, and just improve and see where the process takes you. Now, I've kind of had to speak a big game taking over a job like this because we had to wake some people up and create some excitement, and after all, this is the entertainment business too.”

Cignetti has promoted those winning ways to land recruits and get people talking about Indiana before the 2024 season. He faced a “turbulent” situation early in his Indiana tenure, with 10 offensive starters and a chunk of the 2023 Indiana defense having entered the transfer portal.

When talking to players in the transfer portal or high school recruits, Cignetti’s message has been simple. 

“We win. We’re gonna win here,” he said Thursday.

Cignetti shows them his previous first-year improvements, overall accomplishments at James Madison and success developing quarterbacks, wide receivers and defensive linemen, especially. That helped Cignetti land a 30-player incoming transfer portal class, ranked No. 28 in the nation by 247Sports, and a 17-player high school class, ranked No. 43. 

“I’m not going to tolerate not being successful. I want to make that clear right off the bat,” Cignetti said. “... It’s a new day and age in college football, where with the portal, you can change your team real quick. Fortunately, I was given the resources to do that. I knew when we came in and we started interviewing the players that we needed a lot of new faces. And fortunately, they did me a favor by leaving.”

He focused on production over potential, bringing in many players with multiple years of starting experience and all-conference accolades. Transfers from James Madison that followed Cignetti to Indiana are prime examples, highlighted by D’Angelo Ponds, Aiden Fisher, Zach Horton, Tyler Stephens, Elijah Sarratt, Mikail Kamara and Jailin Walker.

Ohio transfer Kurtis Rourke is the favorite to start at quarterback for Indiana, and he has 33 starts under his belt as a second-team All-MAC performer in 2023. Perhaps two of Cignetti’s biggest recruiting wins were Donaven McCulley and Carter Smith, who played at Indiana last season but entered the portal during the coaching change. Cignetti was able to convince them to turn down offers from big-name programs and return to Bloomington.

Financial commitment from the university and donors helped make those recruiting efforts possible in an era where players can monetize their name, image and likeness. So did updates to Indiana’s weight room, new turf at the indoor practice facility, and game day enhancements to Memorial Stadium.

“I think that's been a real key component, things that are critical to a program's success,” Cignetti said. “I think the university has anted up. It's very important to them that we get football going, and there shouldn't be any limitations on what we can accomplish in football.”

“People are excited. There’s probably a certain few out there that don’t like me being so outspoken, but so what. I think they’re excited. I’ve been told this is the most excitement around here in a long time. I can’t judge it, and I’m happy there is, but now we’ve gotta produce.”

Indiana has the most losses in FBS history, and coaching there is considered a difficult challenge. But Cignetti reminded everyone that just three seasons ago under coach Tom Allen, the Hoosiers were a touchdown away from winning at Ohio State in 2020, which would have resulted in representing the East Division in the Big Ten championship game. Winning at Indiana, though challenging, is possible.

Indiana’s 2024 schedule sets up more favorably than those at the end of Allen’s tenure. Altogether, Indiana ranks No. 43 nationally in ESPN’s strength of schedule metric. The Hoosiers face three mid-major opponents in the nonconference schedule – Florida International, Western Illinois and Charlotte – and don’t face a nonconference foe like Cincinnati, a College Football Playoff participant, or Louisville, which made the ACC Championship, like they did in recent seasons.

Big Ten expansion also meant East and West divisions were eliminated. Indiana still plays Ohio State and Michigan, but Penn State isn’t on the schedule for the first time since 2006. The first Big Ten game is also Indiana’s first-ever matchup against UCLA, a topic that evoked more confidence from Cignetti.

“We’re just going to an old stadium to kick somebody’s ass,” Cignetti said. “When I say that, that’s not directed toward UCLA. That’s the objective every week. Look, I know 1967 we were there [for the Rose Bowl] and haven’t been there since. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re not going out for a cruise or on a tour. We’re going out there to play a football game. We got a job to do.”

Preparing for that job continues next week when fall camp begins. He included consistency of performance, intangibles, player development and scheme development in a broad list of improvements Indiana needs to make before its season opener on Aug. 31 against Florida International. 

Cignetti has done plenty of talking this offseason, and now it’s time to put it all together and back it up. There’s a lot of unknowns with a new roster and staff, but Cignetti certainly has a vision for Indiana.

“When I say I feel like we've made a lot of progress, I understand we've got to put it on the field. We've got to put it on the field,” Cignetti said. “But nothing gets people excited like winning. You string together a couple of wins, all of a sudden you're on national TV every week. You can't get in that stadium. You become the talk of the country.”

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