Curt Cignetti bet on himself, bet on these players, and Indiana has a national championship to show for it

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Google him. He won.

There’s now a brand new update on Curt Cignetti. He doesn’t just win. He wins national championships, the first one in Indiana history, capping the greatest two-year turnaround in college football history.

“If I was smart, I’d probably retire, but we need the money,” Cignetti joked early Tuesday morning.

And, yes, he was smiling. The entire Hoosier Nation was smiling in the aftermath of Indiana’s 27-21 victory over Miami in the College Football Playoff national championship game, completing a storybook season that several Indiana players repeated over and over again would be made into a movie one day.

Just not “Hoosiers.” That one’s already been done and was about an improbable basketball season, a sport that will forever be revered in the Hoosier state.

But good luck in topping this, and good luck in topping perfection, as in 16-0, the first time a college football team has done that since Yale in 1894.

“They said we didn’t have enough four-star players, didn’t have this and didn’t have that and that we weren’t in the same club with Ohio State, Alabama and all those other name schools,” Indiana senior receiver Elijah Sarratt said. “It’s not the name that matters. It’s the team, a team that plays for each other, a team that’s not afraid to work and a team that has the right coach.

“My boy Cig has the kind of confidence that spreads throughout the whole program, and here we are — national champs. Nobody’s ever going to be able to take that away from us.”

Who saw it coming? Cignetti clearly did when Indiana hired him on Nov. 23, 2023, and he famously said at his introductory press conference, “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.”

He was right. In 13 seasons as a head coach, he’d never suffered through a losing season. But taking over at Indiana, which had lost more games than anybody else in college football when he arrived in Bloomington, even he knew that he might be “out on a limb,” when he realized he had 10 offensive starters in the portal and a roster that had dwindled to 30 players.

“Nobody was talking about a natty, but we knew right away that we had something, that Coach Cig was different,” said redshirt junior offensive tackle Carter Smith, who was a part of the 2022 signing class and already at Indiana when Cignetti arrived.

It didn’t matter that Cignetti, a 26-year assistant coach before he got his first head coaching shot at Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2011, had never even been a head coach in the Power Four ranks.

The remaining players saw the kind of players he was bringing in. They saw the culture in the locker room changing. They saw Cignetti’s steely belief in himself and in them.

He called his shot back in late 2023 introductory press conference and delivered Monday night as Hard Rock Stadium was rocking to the tunes of John Mellencamp (a native Hooiser) and delirious Indiana fans basking in red confetti and coming to grips with the fact that they were kings of the college football world.

Center Pat Coogan, his hand and pants bloodied, stood on the field trying to explain it all — Indiana’s remarkable run over the past two years (27-2), their playoff run this season with wins over heavyweights Alabama, Oregon and Miami and his quarterback Fernando Mendoza’s gritty 12-yard touchdown run on fourth down.

It was a play that in many ways epitomized this team and this season. Cignetti initially was going to kick the short field goal, but called a timeout to think about it.

“That’s who he is, who we are. We go for it,” Coogan said. “It was like, ‘Hell yeah, we’re going for it.’”

But it wasn’t until redshirt junior Jamari Sharpe intercepted Miami’s Carson Beck with 44 seconds to play that anybody on Indiana’s sideline could even think about celebrating. The Hurricanes had a first down on the Hoosiers’ 41 and were driving.

“Every moment of adversity, every challenge, we met it,” said senior linebacker Aiden Fisher, one of 13 players who came with Cignetti to Indiana from James Madison. “We exceeded the expectations, and I’m now ready to put that ring on my finger.”

If anybody in or around college football is still rubbing their eyes, it’s finally time to stop. The Hoosiers have been the best team, the most complete team and the most disciplined team all season.

That didn’t change Monday against a Miami team that Coogan said was the most physical he’s played against all season.

“That was a war. We knew it, but 10 up, it’s like, ‘Holy shit,’” Coogan said. “But, no, I mean that’s football.”

Cignetti said he had one beer after the game and that there might be time for a few more. But sounding very much like his former boss at Alabama, Nick Saban, he said he’d probably take one day off and get right back to working on the 2026 season.

Indiana super fan and NIL supporter Mark Cuban said Cignetti had a little Bobby Knight in him.

“He doesn’t suffer fools and he knows exactly what he wants,” Cuban said of Cignetti.

But after spending time at such outposts as IUP, Elon and James Madison, Cignetti made it very clear why he was sitting in the winning postgame press conference early Tuesday morning.

“I took an unprecedented chance in this business and ended up here,” Cignetti said. “When I took that job (IUP), the goal wasn’t to end up here, but I did. The reason I’m sitting here today, all those things prepared me for this. But the reason I’m sitting here today is because of guys like this (players surrounding him at the podium), and there’s a ton of them in that locker room and a great coaching staff.

“A lot of us that have been together for a long time.”