Curt Cignetti is not for everyone. Indiana is just fine with that.

“They understand the new way that college football is kind of going.”

LOS ANGELES — Riley Nowakowski began his career at Wisconsin as a walk-on, so he was never really treated to the bells and whistles that accompany a big-time recruitment. When he entered the portal last December, that figured to change.

He was all set to visit Illinois, but then he received a call from Indiana tight ends coach Grant Cain. He took a visit to Bloomington first, sat down with head coach Curt Cignetti, and before long he canceled all of his other visits.

No, Cignetti didn’t sell him a bag of goods about what a special player he was.

Quite the opposite, actually.

The coach thought that the tight end could improve as a receiver. That he could finish his blocks better. That he could more consistently fight for an extra yard or two at the end of a play.

It was all exactly what Nowakowski had longed to hear.

“A lot of people will blow smoke and just convince you that this is a place that you should be at, whether you’re the best fit or not,” Nowakowski told The Inside Zone. “So I think that’s what really meant a lot to me, is he was willing to tell me a few of my flaws and talking about how we’d work on them and how we’d improve them. And I think that’s what really brought me here.”