LAS VEGAS — Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti couldn’t resist taking a shot at the SEC’s seeming obsession with his team’s schedule.
One of the first questions Cignetti got during his appearance at Big Ten media days Tuesday was about the criticism surrounding the program’s recent decision to cancel a future home-and-home series against Virginia. It’s an extension of the discussion that started ahead of last year’s College Football Playoff when IU made the field with the second-lowest strength of schedule among non-automatic qualifiers (ranked No. 35).
While IU’s strategy to move away from scheduling non-conference opponents pre-dates Cignetti’s arrival in Bloomington, he signed off and defended the move while simultaneously poking fun at the Big Ten’s rivals down south.
“Here’s the bottom line, OK, we picked up an extra home game, and we play nine conference games,” Cignetti said. “The two best conferences in college football, any football guy that’s objective will tell you is the Big Ten and the SEC, all right — 12 of the 16 SEC teams play three (Group of Five) or an FCS game, 12 of those teams play 36 games, 29 G5 games and seven FCS games, and one less conference game. All right? So we figured we would just adopt SEC scheduling philosophy, you know.”
Indiana’s schedule was also a prominent topic during Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti’s news conference that opened the event.
While Petitti would love to see Big Ten school schedule “tough” nonconference opponents, he said it’s up to the decision-makers in college football to properly incentivize those matchups.
“A lot of these games tend to be played early in the season,” Petitti said. “You don’t quite know who your team is at that point. Teams move up and down across the season. Some teams are unhealthy or unlucky. It really depends. Ifocus more on let’s create an incentive to schedule more of them naturally.”
Cignetti doesn’t anticipate IU’s schedule will be a talking point for much longer with games on the schedule this year at Iowa, Oregon and Penn State.
“It will all be done between the white lines,” Cignetti said. “Talking season will end here soon, and then let’s play the games and see where it stands at the end of the year.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: ‘Just adopt SEC scheduling philosophy.’ Curt Cignetti jokes about critiques of IU schedule changes
Reporting by Michael Niziolek, The Herald-Times / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
