College Football

Curt Cignetti and Indiana are feeling the heat unlike any other CFP team

Updated Dec. 19, 2024 4:52 p.m. ET

College Football and College Basketball Writer

The way Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti told the story was this: several hours before his news conference on Monday morning, he and the Hoosiers’ assistants held a meeting to begin their game-week preparation for the College Football Playoff. They’d spent the previous seven days hustling and scrambling, texting and treasure hunting, in what amounts to a non-stop juggling act to satisfy the sport’s bulging December calendar.

Not only were the Hoosiers continuing to practice as they awaited the selection show that would ultimately reveal their fate — a first-round road game against seventh-seeded Notre Dame on Friday night — but the coaching staff’s simultaneous mining of the transfer portal, facilitation of recruiting visits and the re-recruitment of Indiana’s own players ensured the staff was keeping at least half an eye on the formation of its 2025 roster.

Cignetti wanted the seven-day juggling act to conclude around noon Sunday, at which point he and his coaches could return to the normal weekly schedule that helped them to an 11-1 overall record and establish new single-season program bests for conference wins (eight), offensive touchdowns (68) and consecutive victories (10), among others. The instruction from Cignetti was to leave all cell phones outside the meeting room, as attention shifted squarely to Notre Dame. Every assistant but one had violated the rule. Recruiting never stops in modern college football.

"It was challenging," Cignetti said when asked about balancing game planning and roster-building efforts. "I did get home a lot later than I normally do, and I was still in early — 4:30 a.m., 5 a.m. — because you're dealing with portal evaluations, official visits, and still opponent prep to some degree. Then you're dealing with your staff and your player retention as well. I'm glad that week is behind us."

Ever since the transfer portal opened on Dec. 9, no team in this year’s expanded CFP is under more pressure to multitask than Indiana, a cellar dweller in the Big Ten before Cignetti and his unflappable self-belief arrived last winter. To reboot a program that had more losses than any other FBS school, Cignetti overhauled the roster with 51 newcomers ahead of the 2024 season. It’s a number that included 27 transfers — 13 of which followed their head coach from James Madison, where Cignetti worked from 2019-23 — and a high school recruiting class that finished 65th nationally in the 247Sports rankings, sandwiched between Boise State and Toledo, and 16th out of 18 schools in the revamped Big Ten. The current roster has 18 players using an extra year of eligibility left over from the COVID-19 pandemic and 23 more players listed as redshirt juniors or older. Turnover from Year 1 to Year 2 under Cignetti could be seismic.

The fact that Indiana is different from every other program in this year’s CFP only adds to the urgency for Cignetti and his staff to succeed both on and off the field in December. Unlike Clemson, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State and Notre Dame — all of whom can be considered blue bloods or thereabouts — the Hoosiers aren’t rich with the history and tradition that attracts high-level recruits on an annual basis. Unlike Boise State, which represents the Mountain West, the Hoosiers don’t play in a league that is as easily winnable on an annual basis, thus clearing a more favorable path to the CFP. Nor do they have a line of oil tycoons flooding the athletic department with NIL dollars like SMU, upstarts from the ACC. Even Arizona State, which might be the most comparable program to Indiana with several decades of prolonged mediocrity, will be bringing back a high-level quarterback for 2025 in starter Sam Leavitt — a luxury the Hoosiers won’t have when Kurtis Rourke’s eligibility expires following an incredible season.

"In terms of the recruiting calendar, I don't know that there's any easy answers to that," Cignetti said. "When you look at it from a player's perspective, everybody starts school in January, so guys that are switching schools need to have the opportunity to visit prospective schools in December. But yet seasons end at the end of November, championship games [are] the first week of December, and there's always going to be bowl games — and now there's the expanded playoff. I don't really know the answer to that. I don't think it's a simple situation, and if it was, it would be remedied by now."

One of the ways Indiana sought to combat the roster churn was by signing Cignetti to a new, long-term contract in mid-November, at which point he’d led the Hoosiers to a 10-0 record less than one year after being hired. The fresh deal secured Cignetti through the 2032 season and will pay him an average of $8 million per year, plus an additional $1 million retention bonus. And once Indiana finalized its agreement with Cignetti, the athletic department began working on two-year extensions for strength and conditioning coach Derek Owings and nine of the program’s on-field assistants. The lone member of Cignetti’s staff not expected to return is co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri, who accepted a promotion to become the full offensive coordinator at UCLA. But even Sunseri has opted to remain with the Hoosiers through the postseason as a reflection of the strong culture Cignetti established.

Committing to Cignetti and his assistants for the long haul afforded Indiana the best chance to capitalize on its magical season during the player acquisition phase of modern college football’s roster-building process, swatting aside the notion that their time with the Hoosiers was little more than a stepping stone toward jobs at more traditional powers. Cignetti responded by adding six transfers in a five-day span from Dec. 13-17, which gave Indiana the highest-rated portal class of any team in this year’s CFP by Wednesday evening, according to 247Sports, and a group that ranks 26th overall. The next-closest CFP participant is Oregon, which has added four transfers to a class that ranks No. 33 overall.

The Hoosiers’ newcomers include three-star defensive tackle Hosea Wheeler from Western Kentucky, three-star cornerback Amariyun Knighten from Northern Illinois, three-star running back Lee Beebe Jr. from UAB, three-star defensive tackle Dominique Ratcliff from Texas State and a pair of specialists. All the position players logged at least 295 snaps this season, with three of them playing at least 400 snaps each.

"I got my mistakes out of me at a young age, and learned a lot in terms of what I was looking [for regarding] the prototypical prospect that came to a four-year school and was successful," Cignetti said during his second news conference of the week on Wednesday afternoon. "What that looked like in high school, or now in the transfer portal, versus the guy that had potential but hadn't quite put it together yet.

"So production over potential — you've heard me say it a million times — it worked for us."

It worked for someone like Rourke, who threw for 7,651 yards and 50 touchdowns across five seasons at Ohio before coming to Indiana and putting together the finest year of his career: 202 of 287 passing (70.4%) for 2,827 yards, 27 touchdowns and only four interceptions.

It worked for someone like tailback Justice Ellison, who’d rushed for more than 1,700 yards over the last three seasons at Wake Forest before exploding for a career-high 811 yards and 10 touchdowns with the Hoosiers. Ellison’s backfield partner, Ty Son Lawton, who is one of the baker’s dozen transfers from JMU, chipped in a career-high 12 touchdowns and 634 rushing yards in his sixth season of college football.

It worked for nearly everybody on the Hoosiers’ defense, a unit for which all five of the leading tacklers played somewhere other than Indiana last year.

"I came here for this," Ellison said earlier this week. "I came here to win. I came here for the playoffs. I came here to do it with guys that I haven't done a lot of football with."

And that’s exactly the formula Cignetti and his staff would love to bottle as they prepare for Notre Dame with one eye looking forward to 2025.

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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