Fortuna Files: Indiana is the new king of college football. What’s that mean for everyone else?
Looking closer at the numbers to see how Indiana got here, how others can do the same, and why Notre Dame could be extremely well-positioned to make a run in 2026.
School here is canceled due to cold weather. I already miss Miami, where 60 degrees meant that the locals were wearing parkas and the traveling Indiana fans were wearing shorts.
1. I asked Curt Cignetti the final question in his national championship news conference. I didn’t know what to expect. But I did not expect this. The guy who told us all to “Google” him upon his hire, the guy who talked a big game and walked an even bigger one from Day 1 in Bloomington, had to wait until he was 62 to get his shot at the big time. Then it took him all of two years to turn Indiana into a 16-0 national champion.
2. I figured if he would ever dive deep, and maybe even get a little reflective, it would be now. So I asked: Was it hard to not get bitter all those years before Indiana, knowing what a great coach he is?
3. Cig’s response: “I really wasn’t a successful coach for 40-plus years. I got a great break at 23 years old at Rice University, which back then was in the Southwest Conference. We played SMU before they got the death penalty, and I was making good money. It was one of the top two conferences in the country, but Rice didn’t win, and Temple didn’t win, and we didn’t win at Pitt under Johnny Majors, and people want to hire people from winning programs. We won a little bit under Walt Harris, but we were .500. I learned a lot about quarterback play from him. He was a great quarterback coach. Went to NC State, we won. We had Philip Rivers. And then I spent seven years there.
“But when Coach Saban hired me, we were 7-6 our first year at Alabama. We lost to Louisiana Monroe 11th game of the year at home. But the next year we had six first-round draft choices in that recruiting class, and we were 12-0 in the regular season. Lost the SEC game that was 1 vs. 2 to Tebow and Urban (Meyer). Next year we played them again, beat them, went 14-0 and won the national championship. I really thought after my one year with Nick, I had what I needed to go out — that tied it together for me because I was a son of a coach who was a Hall of Fame head coach.
“I was hitting the big 5-0. I didn’t want to be a career assistant. I was not a coordinator. I was not on track to get a head-coaching job, and I didn’t want to be a 60-year-old assistant. I’d seen what those lives look like as a kid. So I took a chance. Took an unprecedented chance in this business and ended up here. When I took that job, 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, and there’s a ton of them in that locker room, and a great coaching staff and a lot of us have been together a long time, a great strength and conditioning staff, a commitment from the president and AD, and then the changing times of athletics. Some of my previous experiences really helped me be ready to manage NIL and transfer portal and those kind of things.”
4. I’m a sucker for a good story. (Maybe that’s why I tell them for a living.) I’m a sucker for guys who bet on themselves. (Hey, The Inside Zone didn’t start itself.) So I — pardon the pun — Googled some old stories on Cig in light of the natty to see if there was anything anyone had missed along the way.
