Curt Cignetti has already orchestrated one of the greatest one-year turnarounds in college football history at Indiana.
He turned a 9-27 team that was 3-24 in Big Ten play over its last three seasons into a College Football Playoff contender while shrinking a once-large group of doubters with every win.
Indiana’s latest victory, a 56-7 home thrashing of Nebraska in front of the fourth-largest crowd in Memorial Stadium history, is the most complete chapter of the season-long book that Cignetti began when he left James Madison and took over a barren, downtrodden Indiana program in late 2023.
The former JMU head coach stressed from day one that the Indiana rebuild, which many people including Indiana fans deemed impossible, wasn’t a daunting task for him. He had already done it at Elon and JMU, so why not Indiana?
“We're going to change the culture, the mindset, the expectation level and improve the brand of Indiana Hoosier football,” Cignetti said on Dec. 1, 2023, at his introductory press conference. “There will be no self-imposed limitations on what we can accomplish.”
The culture change caused a multitude of players to enter the transfer portal.
“Day one on the job, I’ve got 10 offensive starters in the transfer portal and half my defense,” Cignetti said on July 25 at Big Ten Media Days. “Three weeks later… we completely flipped the roster.”
Cignetti brought along most of his assistants — the only coach retained from Tom Allen’s staff was offensive line coach Bob Bostad — including offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan and defensive coordinator Bryant Haines, who have been with him for nine and 10 years, respectively. Strength and conditioning coordinator Derek Owings has coached under Cignetti for over half a decade.
“They understand the blueprint, the process, what I expect,” Cignetti said.
With the help of a newfound NIL base, he recruited 30 transfers, including 13 from James Madison. Despite what some Dukes fans will tell you, some of Indiana’s biggest keys to its 7-0 start are the players who came over from schools besides JMU.
Kurtis Rourke, Indiana’s sixth-year senior quarterback who emerged as a dark horse for the Heisman Trophy after completing nearly 75% of his passes and throwing five touchdowns for every interception in seven games, transferred from Ohio where he earned MAC Offensive Player of the Year honors in 2022.
Indiana announced Sunday that Rourke will be out indefinitely after sustaining a thumb injury in the first half of the Hoosiers’ win over Nebraska, but Hoosier fans shouldn’t worry too much.
Rourke’s backup is Tayven Jackson, a Center Grove, Indiana native who joined the Hoosiers prior to the 2023 season after redshirting his lone year at Tennessee.
Jackson took over for Rourke in the second half of Saturday’s game and was sharp as a tack, completing seven of his eight passes for 91 yards and two touchdowns, including a Rourke-esque back-shoulder throw to Elijah Sarratt.
Indiana scored 28 points in the second half with Jackson at quarterback — the same amount it scored with Rourke in the first half — despite possessing the ball for under three minutes in the third quarter.
Jackson looks much more confident under the mentorship of new quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri, one of many assistants brought over from JMU to Indiana by Cignetti.
Justice Ellison, Indiana’s leading rusher who is averaging seven yards per carry and found the end zone twice against a highly-touted Nebraska run defense Saturday, spent his first four seasons at Wake Forest. Omar Cooper Jr., one of the holdovers from the Allen era, has emerged alongside Sarratt at the top of one of the Big Ten’s most stacked wide receiver rooms, dazzling fans with his ball-catching and downfield blocking abilities.
Cooper is tied with Sarratt and Ohio transfer Miles Cross for second on the team with three receiving touchdowns. At the top is former Demon Deacon Ke’Shawn Williams, who didn’t start until his final season at Wake Forest.
This is all without even mentioning the defense, which is allowing the second-fewest points per game in the Big Ten (13.7) while leading the conference in rushing defense (81.9 yards per game) and sacks (21).
The most underappreciated aspect of Indiana’s success is the offensive line. Ellison likened his running lanes against Nebraska to the Red Sea. Behind Bostad’s front five, Indiana is (still) averaging over 200 rushing yards per game and it has allowed just seven sacks in seven games.
Nobody on Indiana’s starting offensive line came from JMU. Yes, Nick Kidwell was expected to start on the offensive line before the season, but he went down with a knee injury well before kickoff vs. FIU on Aug. 31. Drew Evans and Trey Wedig both transferred from Wisconsin. Mike Katic, Carter Smith and Bray Lynch have all spent their entire careers at Indiana and are deservingly being rewarded for their perseverance and tenacity after years of sub-par coaching held them back.
The contributions of JMU transfers such as Sarratt, running back Ty Son Lawton, tight end Zach Horton, defensive back D’Angelo Ponds, linebackers Aiden Fisher and Jailin Walker, as well as defensive linemen Mikail Kamara and James Carpenter have been just as crucial to Indiana’s success this season.
That said, referring to Indiana solely as “JMU West” and trying to diminish Cignetti’s success because a talented nucleus of players followed him to a new program is willfully ignorant and misguided. It’s a testament to his ability as a coach and recruiter in the new age of college football.
Cignetti, who describes himself as a lifelong underdog with a chip on his shoulder, brought a host of underdogs and overlooked players with something to prove to one of the lowliest programs in the history of college football and has completely flipped it on its head in seven games.
He talked the talk and, through seven weeks, he’s walked the walk.
“We’re picked 17th out of an 18-team league, and I get it,” Cignetti said July 25.
Cignetti’s teams have been projected to finish second-to-worst on two other occasions. Both 2017 Elon and 2022 James Madison went on to play for conference titles. The Dukes won the Sun Belt in 2022.
“I’m not into making predictions, that’s just a historical fact,” Cignetti said.
Over halfway through the season, Indiana sits alongside Oregon and Penn State at the top of the Big Ten standings. With the Ducks and the Nittany Lions, Indiana and Ohio State are among the favorites to play in the Big Ten Championship Game on Dec. 7 in Indianapolis.
If Indiana keeps handling business like it has — say, for example, rushing for five touchdowns against a Nebraska defense that hadn’t given up a rushing touchdown all season — its trip to Ohio State on Nov. 23 could be one of the highest-profile games in program history, one with seismic Big Ten Championship and College Football Playoff implications.
Ask Cignetti or any of the players and they’ll make it very clear — they don’t care about the noise. They call it “rat poison.”
“You’ve got to stay humble and hungry and maintain your edge,” Cignetti said Oct. 14. “You’ve got to have some special characteristics to be able to deal with success and not be affected by it in a negative manner.”
A big part of Cignetti’s success comes from his unrelenting quest for improvement.
“I have to be focused, locked in (and) learning,” Cignetti said following Indiana’s week seven win over Nebraska. “All there is is the here and now. You want to improve as much as you can on a daily basis. If you prepare properly, anything’s possible.”
Indiana announced Sunday that all remaining games on its home slate are sold out. Including the Nebraska sellout, the Hoosiers will close the season with four consecutive home sellouts. For comparison, Indiana sold out eight total home games from 2000-23.
“Nothing gets people excited like winning,” Cignetti said July 25. “You string together a couple of wins, and 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.”
He said he’s not into making predictions, but the proof is in the pudding. Indiana thumped Nebraska on FOX Big Noon Kickoff and College Gameday is hosting its first-ever full Saturday show in Bloomington on Oct. 26 when the Hoosiers host Washington.
There’s still a long way to go, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at what’s already happened as nothing short of remarkable. After Indiana’s season opener versus FIU, Cignetti and the players stressed how disappointed they were that the Memorial Stadium crowd didn’t stay until the final whistle.
“We’ve gotta keep the people in the seats after halftime,” Cignetti said Aug. 31. “We need to create a Power Four environment in the stadium.”
Less than two months later, the Hoosiers are setting attendance records, and not just because certain opposing fanbases travel well. Rather, they’re doing it because they’ve done something that seemed impossible to most onlookers: They’ve turned a perennial laughingstock into one of college football’s most exciting teams.
For some, that would be a good place to end the book, but this is just the beginning for Cignetti. Just ask him.
