Curt Cignetti has built something real with the Indiana Hoosiers.
If Cignetti can win it all by beating the Miami Hurricanes in the College Football Playoff final, he’ll have brought Indiana football its first national championship. He’ll have also put Indiana firmly on the map in a college football sense, but the case can be made that he’s already done that.
Frankly, no matter how the CFP title game goes, Cignetti has made Indiana a destination in just two seasons. He’s leveraged NIL deals and the transfer portal to bring in experienced and hungry players who are looking to prove themselves.
Quarterback Fernando Mendoza is a great example of that. He was a somewhat unknown entity at Cal in 2023 and 2024. He’s now the first Heisman Trophy winner in Indiana history and a school legend.
Here’s the issue for Cignetti, though. At least, it’s an issue as far as legendary head coach Nick Saban sees it.
The Indiana head coach was able to sell being a part of something special to all of these players currently at Indiana. From here on out, Saban is warning Cignetti that it’s going to be more about what Indiana can do for prospects rather than what prospects can do for Indiana.
“One of the things that these guys are going to have to go through, which Curt’s going to have to go through, is, he has done this phenomenal job in Indiana. Everybody wanted to come to Indiana. People wanted to transfer there,” Saban said. “Everybody wanted to go there because they wanted to prove something. That’s how it was at Alabama. Then, when you win in 2009 and you climbed the mountain successfully, you become the mountain,” Saban explained on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Monday (h/t On3).
Nick Saban explains how success could change things for Curt Cignetti and Indiana Hoosiers
When Saban won the national championship at Alabama in 2009, he brought in players who were hungry to win and to do so with the Crimson Tide.
Once that success came, though, Saban realized that the dynamics had changed, not just in recruiting players, but also in the way he had to motivate them.
“Julio [Jones], Mark Barron, all those guys came to Alabama because they wanted to prove something. They were Alabama guys. But, once we won, everybody was coming to Alabama for what Alabama could do for them, and that changed the dynamic dramatically, and that was more challenging for me as a coach,” Saban said.
Of course, these are good problems to have. Cignetti would certainly trade some changing dynamics for the opportunity to raise a championship trophy.
Even if he doesn’t win it on Monday evening, the dynamics have absolutely changed for the Hoosiers — perhaps for a long time.