Fortuna Files: It's all coming up Indiana
The No. 1 team in the country is cleaning up in the portal, too.
Is it just me, or is there a budding bromance between Curt Cignetti and Dan Lanning?
1. Indiana is winning an offseason that hasn’t even technically started for the Hoosiers yet. On Sunday, two days after the transfer portal officially opened, Cignetti’s bunch landed seven marquee transfers: safety Preston Zachman (Wisconsin), running back Turbo Richard (BC), end Tobi Osunsanmi (Kansas State), QB Josh Hoover (TCU), safety Jiquan Sanks (Cincinnati), receiver Nick Marsh (Michigan State) and end Josh Burnham (Notre Dame).
2. Four of those seven are top-10 portal players at their position, per 247Sports. How is Indiana doing this? Well, the winning sure helps. I also asked members of last year’s transfer class — frontline guys on this year’s contender — what it was like to be courted by Cignetti once they entered the portal. You can read that story from Wednesday here, as it seems even more relevant today than it did before the Rose Bowl.
3. As for on-the-field matters: The most remarkable part of Indiana’s 38-3 Rose Bowl win over Alabama was how unremarkable it all seemed. Sure, Hoosiers fans packed the joint and rightfully threw themselves a party. But IU players and coaches were fairly matter of fact after the game, talking about the next steps that await them. It was something to see in-person.
4. When I was at The Athletic, we did a roundtable in 2021 that included picking who would be the next first-time national champion. Oregon was the favorite. Ever the contrarian, I picked South Carolina, reasoning that an SEC team with the resources the Gamecocks had could perhaps pull off what Clemson had just done in the years prior. None of us, as you can imagine, picked Indiana. The Hoosiers or Ducks will play for it all on Jan. 19. How about that?
5. The Hoosiers are currently as low as +132 on FanDuel to win it all. No one else has better odds anywhere than Miami at +290 on Caesars. How about that?
