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New era of college football could help other teams replicate Indiana's remarkable rise

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[November 20, 2024] By STEVE MEGARGEE

Indiana has made the type of turnaround that had only happened once before at the power-conference level over the last decade.

But this new era of college football with unbalanced schedules and loosened transfer restrictions might make such dramatic transformations more common.

“I think any P4 school with the proper commitment is capable of being successful and being ultimately successful because really the difference between victory and defeat in most of these games is very slight, slim,” Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said. “It’s all attainable.”

Cignetti just agreed to terms on an eight-year contract as No. 5 Indiana prepares for arguably the biggest game in program history, a showdown Saturday at No. 2 Ohio State. Cignetti’s new deal gives him an annual salary of $8 million plus a $1 million annual retention bonus.

He earned that raise when Indiana won its first 10 games this season after going 3-9 the year before his arrival.

“What he’s done is utterly amazing,” said Jimbo Fisher, the former Florida State and Texas A&M coach who now hosts a show on SiriusXM Radio. “I think it’s the best job in college football right now. I think he’s national coach of the year.”

If the pandemic-shortened 2020 season is taken out of consideration, Indiana is the 21st team since 1973 to win at least 10 games immediately after a season in which it had three wins or fewer, according to Sportradar.

Indiana is the first Power Four team to accomplish this since Michigan State went 10-3 in 2017 after going 3-9 in 2016. The last Power Four program to do it before Michigan State was Auburn, which was 3-9 in 2012 but went 12-1 and reached the BCS championship game in 2013.

Indiana’s emergence has come in a season featuring many other dramatic rises and falls, whether it’s Vanderbilt going from 2-10 in 2023 to beating Alabama and becoming bowl eligible this year, or Florida State winning just one game thus far after posting an undefeated regular-season record a year ago.

That lends credence to the notion that the loosening of transfer restrictions and the emergence of unbalanced schedules in super-sized conferences could enable other programs to replicate Indiana’s rapid rebuild.

“I do think it’s more conducive to happening, yes,” Fisher said.

Now that players don’t have to sit out a season after switching schools — resulting in exponentially more transfers — teams can reshape their rosters every year. Indiana opened the season with 27 transfer newcomers and had just 36 returning scholarship players.

The only Football Bowl Subdivision teams with fewer returning scholarship players were North Texas and Colorado, with 31 each.

“They just did a really good job of bringing in the right guys, bringing in the right people,” said Michigan coach Sherrone Moore, whose team lost at Indiana 20-15 on Nov. 9.

The fortunes of teams from year to year also can change depending on their conference schedules. The Big Ten has 18 teams playing nine conference games and the Southeastern Conference has 16 teams with an eight-game conference schedule. That means some teams will have much tougher or easier schedules than their conference foes.

Only one of the 10 teams Indiana has beaten owns a winning record: Washington (6-5).

“I do think it will be that way because there are chances you’re going to have years where you get to roll through a schedule that might not be the trickiest,” said Dan Mullen, a former Florida and Mississippi State coach now working as an analyst for ESPN.

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Indiana players celebrate after defeating Michigan in an NCAA college football game in Bloomington, Ind., Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)

Mullen also noted that sometimes you don’t know how favorable a schedule might be until the end of the season. For instance, Indiana played Michigan and Washington, the two participants in last year’s College Football Playoff championship game. Both are struggling to finish above .500 this year.

While the transfer portal and the unbalanced schedules could make it easier for teams to rebuild on the fly, Indiana’s rise included some unique elements. After Cignetti left James Madison for Indiana, 13 players from his former school joined him.

Those former James Madison players already were familiar with Cignetti’s approach and assisted Indiana’s holdovers in adapting to it. That made for an easier transition than if all of Indiana’s transfers had come from a variety of other programs.

“That whole JMU crew that came over really facilitated the culture change here, and they’re all major contributors for the most part,” Cignetti said. “Between the white lines and on defense you’ve got some real key guys playing at a high level. I think that familiarity with the program, the defense, the offense, the special teams has been extremely beneficial.”

Big Ten Network analyst Gerry DiNardo wonders if Indiana’s success might cause another Power Four program making a coaching change to try something similar by hiring a successful Group of Five coach who could bring along players from his former school.

“That is a new model,” DiNardo said. “And that new model obviously is working, and that new model obviously could work again.”

The help Indiana got from the transfer portal and its favorable schedule shouldn’t diminish what the Hoosiers have accomplished. Revitalizing a program remains challenging even in this era. Just ask Nebraska and Wisconsin, two of Indiana’s Big Ten rivals.

Both programs have much greater football traditions than Indiana, which had never won as many as 10 games in a season before this year. Nebraska’s Matt Rhule and Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell — both in their second years — had higher profiles than Cignetti had upon his arrival at Indiana. Yet the Cornhuskers and Badgers are at .500 heading into their Saturday matchup and recently made offensive coordinator changes.

DiNardo understands the enormity of Indiana’s accomplishment better than most. He posted an 8-27 record as Indiana’s coach from 2002-04 and knows the challenges of winning there. He credits athletic director Scott Dolson for bucking the trend of hiring an up-and-coming offensive coordinator and instead choosing the 63-year-old Cignetti, who had a proven record of head coaching success at smaller programs.

“Scott Dolson, he deserves a lot of credit for this decision,” DiNardo said last week, before Cignetti got his new deal. “And I think he will continue to support the football coach at a high level, more than previous athletic directors have. It’s not just a one-year deal for Scott. He will give the football coach what he needs to be successful. That wasn’t always true. It was always true that the AD would give the basketball coach what they need to be successful. I think Scott will do both.”
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AP Sports Writers Larry Lage and Michael Marot contributed to this report.

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