OT: D1

[IUPNation]

A lot of people outside this board are ignorant to Cignetti's ability to flat out coach. Dude has a .800 career win %

6-6 vs Slimey Pebble and Mon Valley U.

Nobody is perfect.,

[Chuck Norris]

I think people are overreacting to two good years by Indiana with this stuff. I can't deny that the Hoosiers were the best team in college football this year and performed fairly well last season, but I'd like to see more success from them or replication by another program before I conclude that they've really changed the game. Especially given that:

1. They aren't the only team in FBS to be old with all of the COVID years, medical RS, and the one-time extra year for JUCO guys. There were other programs with comparable average player age (such as Oklahoma State) who were mediocre or even terrible (again, like Oklahoma State). Age does typically help in development, but when you're dealing with the far right tail of human athleticism I don't know that the evidence supports the idea that the difference is as pronounced as it is for people near the median. If other teams start loading up on 5th year seniors/medical RS guys/grad transfers and can't replicate IU's success those coaches (and a lot of pundits and internet commenters prattling on about the Hooser's age) are going to look very silly.
2. From what I can tell Indiana is still the only team since the turn of the millennium to win it all without a roster of primarily blue chip recruits (i.e. 5 stars and the most highly-rated 4 stars). Perhaps they've really unlocked the secrets of development or found a hole in evaluation methods that will render the star system/HS recruiting obsolete, but I need to see more before I buy that.

It's possible that Cignetti and the Hoosiers spell the end of blue chip roster dominance or the emergence of a competing roster construction philosophy, but they may also end up being an aberration. I think it's also entirely possible that a synthesis of the tried and true (blue chip HS recruiting) and Indiana's strategy (accomplished transfers) might come about among some the top programs and lead us back to where we already were. In fact, we've already seen this; the first national champion in the expanded playoff era had two key contributors from the portal who had been less-heralded HS recruits (Howard and Judkins), but they also had a portal addition who'd been a blue chip (Downs) and a slew of homegrown blue chip guys (Henderson, Smith, Egbuka, Tate, Sawyer, etc.). I don't see enough data yet to draw a conclusion on how this will play out and look forward to this experiment over the next few years.

Where did I suggest they’ve changed the game or that everyone else will follow suit? I merely pointed out what has worked incredibly well for Indiana to pull off probably the greatest quick turnaround in the history of the sport. In the second half of the quoted post I said it was unlikely they ever catch this year’s kind of lightning again and that the field would eventually catch up but never said they would do so following Cignetti’s blueprint. I do believe Indiana has staying power because I believe somewhere between Indiana PA and Bloomington Indiana, Curt Cignetti became a fantastic college football coach and he’s found a formula that works for him and his team.

[GregD]

Excellent Wall Street Journal article about the state of college football ad what IU did.
I
The Indiana Hoosiers Are National Champions. College Football Will Never Be the Same.

An underdog turned behemoth edges Miami—in their home stadium—to complete a historic 16-0 campaign


By
Jason Gay
Follow
Jan. 20, 2026 9:00 am ET

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(6 min)
Indiana coach Curt Cignetti hoists the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy. Patrick Smith/Getty Images
You are living in a world in which the Indiana Hoosiers are your college football national champions. I’m not sure how to explain how crazy this is. It’s like going down to the basement and finding the cat singing opera and folding laundry.

No. That’s wrong. Indiana football winning is much crazier than that.

I checked the final score late on Monday, just before midnight—Hoosiers 27, Miami 21. We’ve all watched Indiana’s ascent for two years now, that thrilling 11-2 campaign in 2024, but the summiting is hard to process, this astonishing climb by one of college football’s most misbegotten programs.

Please understand: Indiana wasn’t put here to do this. This was a basketball school that played football as a way to get to basketball season. The football Hoosiers had a handful of good times here and there, but mostly it was a century plus of suffering, a Big Ten punchline, an easy W for the opposition.

How rough was it? Indiana hadn’t won a bowl game since 1991. Now it has finished a single season in which it went undefeated in the Big Ten, won the Big Ten Championship over Ohio State, and then, via a 12-team playoff, the Rose Bowl over freaking Alabama, the Peach Bowl (I’m acting like these bowls are still a thing) over Oregon, and finally, the title game, which (why not?) was played on the home field of its lower-ranked opponent.

This team began the season with longer odds than a lobster in a restaurant tank, traveled more than a Dylan roadie, endured so many postgame ceremonies their thumbs have calluses from lifting trophies, and now, mercifully, can get some rest and their coach a cold one, their 16-0 record a sturdy case as one of the finest seasons of all time.

Ah, I’ll just say it: This is the greatest college football season of all time. I’m sure I’ll get yelled at by some Alabama fans or Huskers or Golden Domers and I probably missed some small mining college that won every game by 250 points when they played with eight guys and a wheelbarrow, but I’m comfy with calling the 2025-26 Hoosiers season as convincing and mind-bending a run as there’s been in the game’s modern era.

What else could be asked? Indiana leapt through every hoop, every ranking, every road game, every skeptical Yeah but have they done this. They answered every challenge and turned college football upside down.

The sport will never be the same. Everybody wants to be Indiana now.
Fernando Mendoza scored on a 12-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. Jamie Squire/Getty Images
At the center of it is Curt Cignetti, the deadpan coaching lifer who took a flier on Bloomington in 2023, told Hoosier Nation he wins wherever he goes —“Google me”—and went out and did it. Now he’s won more than even he thought possible, but whatever.

Cignetti’s gotten a lot of attention for his bravado and his menacing sideline presence, in which he paces and stares like a customer who thinks the butcher’s hiding the best T-bones. He’s as amusing a character as the sports world has these days, but the jokes and memes may have obscured how good a coach he is, how his Hoosiers played disciplined, complete team football, and topped it off with a jewel thief’s nerves.

Cig showed it again Monday, late, when the Hoosiers, up by 3, faced a fourth-and-4 from Miami’s 12-yard line. It’s an easy field goal distance, but Cignetti opted to gamble for a bigger lead, sending Heisman winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza up the middle on a designed run in which the quarterback broke a few tackles and pinballed into the end zone.

The moment told you everything you needed to know. The Hoosiers wouldn’t be denied.

Bruised and battered, Mendoza played like it was the last game of his college life, which it was, but he always played that way. The Hurricanes punished him all night, sometimes legally, sometimes questionably, but he stayed composed, turning to unheralded receiver Charlie Becker as a security blanket. Mendoza will now enter the NFL draft to join the Las Vegas Raiders, and I’ll say it for you: Tom Brady, don’t mess this up.

Indiana’s rise has happened as college football’s gone sideways, shedding its phony amateurism for something professionalized and completely amok. Nobody’s taking charge, which is why there’s a chaotic mess as schools try to sort out how players can get paid, how schools can pay them, how athletes can move between teams, why the heck USC and UCLA are playing in the Big Ten, and if the courts will intervene again.

Officials used to at least pretend this sport had structure. Now it’s basically a chicken truck overturned on the Interstate. Some wizard just proposed fixing this daffy, diluted, far-too-long 12-team playoff by making it 24 teams. You have to hand it to college football. The bad ideas never stop.
Cignetti and Mendoza celebrate after the quarterback’s touchdown run. Kim Klement Neitzel/Imagn Images/Reuters
Did Indiana capitalize on this wide-open wilderness? You betcha. Cignetti airlifted in a bunch of transfers from his former school, James Madison, and there were some bucks on hand to bring in key hires like Mendoza, who arrived from Berkeley.

But even with Mark Cuban in the bleachers, Indiana didn’t buy it all; vanquished opponents like Ohio State and Oregon spent much more. The Hoosiers were proud that no one on their roster was a prized five-star recruit—“misfits,” Mendoza called his teammates, which is maybe a stretch, but OK. The Big Ten media poll picked Indiana to finish sixth in the conference. Sixth! In the conference!

The point is that even the people who say they saw this coming did not. The players say it isn’t a surprise, and some of us may have had a feeling in November or December, but what Indiana football has done defies all history and logic. I’m not complaining. It’s all been great fun, and we’ll remember it forever.

Google it. Indiana football is a national champion. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to check if the singing cat has folded my sweaters.

[IUPNation]

The BIG is now superior to the SEC. When Vanderbilt or Kentuckystan do what Indiana just did then let’s talk…

[ShoNuff]

The BIG is now superior to the SEC. When Vanderbilt or Kentuckystan do what Indiana just did then let’s talk…

As a HUGE University of Georgia fan, this is EXTREMELY fair to say IUPNation !

I am EXTREMELY HAPPY for Coach Cignetti ! Glad he won the chip!

I do wonder if he had stayed at IUP one more year would he led that 2017 IUP team to a national championship.

[ShoNuff]

Go figure. I don't know that I would call it parity when two of the last three national champions - Meatchicken and THE Overrated State University - are bluebloods in the traditional sense, though at least it destroys the theory that the SEC is the dominant force in FBS college football. Whether this new parity results in seeing new teams winning the title every year or if Indiana (Ind.) is on the verge of an Alabama-type run remains to be seen.

And, yes, the portal is doing more harm than good, especially when you have players hopping from team to team - as many as five or six, in some cases.

I HATE the portal with a passion! Like you stated ctrabs74 , with kids jumping from team to team, in some cases year to year, kids are not learning how to actually compete.

[Ship69]

Where did I suggest they’ve changed the game or that everyone else will follow suit? I merely pointed out what has worked incredibly well for Indiana to pull off probably the greatest quick turnaround in the history of the sport. In the second half of the quoted post I said it was unlikely they ever catch this year’s kind of lightning again and that the field would eventually catch up but never said they would do so following Cignetti’s blueprint. I do believe Indiana has staying power because I believe somewhere between Indiana PA and Bloomington Indiana, Curt Cignetti became a fantastic college football coach and he’s found a formula that works for him and his team.

It's not just that Cignetti is a good coach. Indiana, like several of the B1G schools, is a huge university with plenty of financial resources. They've just always been thought of as a basketball school and never bothered to direct much energy toward football. Now that everybody can pay players and Cignetti has established a pathway, there is no reason to think they won't be a competitive program as long as he's around. Obviously they're not going to win a natty every year, but neither are 130-some other schools. Cignetti's extensive experience coaching at D2 and FCS levels actually might be an edge as you have to become a good evaluator and developer of talent when you can't recruit four- and five-star guys (or even top three-stars) all the time.

[IUPNation]

As a HUGE University of Georgia fan, this is EXTREMELY fair to say IUPNation !

I am EXTREMELY HAPPY for Coach Cignetti ! Glad he won the chip!

I do wonder if he had stayed at IUP one more year would he led that 2017 IUP team to a national championship.

You wonder.

[Fightingscot82]

For all the sh*t James Madison gets for the supplemental fee students must pay to support FBS level D1 sports, those students do so willingly and its a clear part of the enrollment. However, James Madison generates roughly twice ($16M) the annual football revenue of Tulane ($7M). For additional comparison, North Dakota State averages $6.5M in football revenue and Grand Valley State averages a little over $2M for football.

On the other hand, Rutgers revealed that their athletic department ran a $78M deficit last fiscal year and they've run up over $500M in deficit spending since joining the Big Ten. YIKES.

To me, that's part of the FBS cleanup that is necessary. Years ago they tried instituting an attendance minimum but all that did was motivate schools to get creative with ticket sales, attendance counting, and overbuild stadiums. There should be an annual revenue minimum and a student supplemental fee for athletics should be receive an approved vote by both students & trustees. That will syphon off the bottom who believe they must be FBS because they're a flagship (UMass, UConn, etc) and push down some schools that just don't have the following to be at the elite level. I think a decent benchmark over a 5 year period that doesn't cut off the majority of G6 schools is warranted. Otherwise they drop down to FCS for football and nothing else changes. Their FBS non-conference games could possibly stay or be rearranged.

[Fightingscot82]

Former Albany and Duquesne head coach Greg Gattuso is expected to be named DC at...Duquesne.

[Fightingscot82]

Tino Sunseri reuniting with Curt Cig

[TheBigCat2192]

Montana HC Bobby Hauck unexpectedly resigned from his position, and was replaced by WR coach Bobby Kennedy.

[TheBigCat2192]

For those who've been primarily focused on our schools' NSD or NFL matters this week, ESPN has published a pair of surprisingly intriguing articles about CFB that I'd consider reading.

The first is a piece about James Franklin's recruiting flip at VT. The whole thing is worth a read but the two most fascinating parts to me were about Franklin maintaining contact even while between jobs, essentially recruiting players to him more than a specific institution:

Suddenly, the figure behind the program's incoming class was gone. But Franklin didn't disappear. Multiple prospects told ESPN that the 54-year-old coach stayed active in class group chats in the weeks after his firing and continued making regular phone calls, reassuring families of former recruits who never really became former recruits.

"He was checking up on me probably once or twice a week," said Mickens, ESPN's No. 13 running back in 2026. "He kept it real with me. That just showed my family what kind of coach he was. The whole time, he was telling us he was going to get a job somewhere soon."

and another about how PSU's recruiting functioned under Franklin

With no head coach in place, the vision for the future was unclear. And the front office infrastructure Franklin had left behind only left the program more vulnerable.

Sources familiar with the program described a Franklin-centric front office operation at Penn State that relied heavily on its head coach and an old-school approach to financials in college football's NIL/revenue share era. Contracts and negotiations moved slowly, according to families of former recruits. At the time of Franklin's firing, the vast majority of the Nittany Lions' 2026 class were not fully locked into revenue share agreements.

"We were trying to get the serious stuff set up and we just couldn't," said Lamah, who later signed with Virginia Tech.

The second article was focused on Montana's HC unexpected retirement. He's not the first HC who's expressed discontent with the "new normal" but I think this is the strongest terms I've seen it expressed in:

"Dealing with what college football has become is not always enjoyable as a head coach," Hauck said. "I just haven't been enjoying it enough. I want to enjoy my career and my job. A lot of the head coach stuff in current day, Division I college football is not enjoyable.

"Dealing with agents and the transient nature of this and the lack of forward thinking by young people -- which it's never been a strong suit for centuries for young people, but now when they've got adults pushing them and pulling them in different directions -- I kind of got tired of all that, the dealing with agents and the transient nature of it. Straw that broke the camel's back, there was nothing like that. This has been residual."

[IUPbigINDIANS]

For those who've been primarily focused on our schools' NSD or NFL matters this week, ESPN has published a pair of surprisingly intriguing articles about CFB that I'd consider reading.

The first is a piece about James Franklin's recruiting flip at VT. The whole thing is worth a read but the two most fascinating parts to me were about Franklin maintaining contact even while between jobs, essentially recruiting players to him more than a specific institution:



and another about how PSU's recruiting functioned under Franklin



The second article was focused on Montana's HC unexpected retirement. He's not the first HC who's expressed discontent with the "new normal" but I think this is the strongest terms I've seen it expressed in:

I'd guess the percentage of players picking the coach and not the school is astronomical.

[Fightingscot82]

I'd guess the percentage of players picking the coach and not the school is astronomical.

For nearly every school its anywhere from 75%-95% the coach and not the school.