CHICAGO — Curt Cignetti stopped himself mid-answer, allowing a bemused laugh to intrude upon his otherwise considered answer.
The question posed to the Indiana football coach was relatively benign: After two years and 20 games of Big Ten football, what did Cignetti — now one of its leading voices — think of the league?
Declaring that “since the NIL era kicked in, the numbers speak for themselves,” Cignetti started into a list of conference contenders. He made it to the second team on his own list before he had to stop himself.
“Iowa?” he said, pausing for that mildly incredulous laugh. “Iowa was one of the most underrated football teams in America last year.”
The line was well-received in Iowa City, where the Hawkeyes flirted seriously with knocking off Indiana and Oregon last season on their way to nine wins and a victory over Diego Pavia’s Vanderbilt in the ReliaQuest Bowl.
Cignetti’s comment should have been appreciated the Big Ten over. It was the right message — from the right man to deliver it — for a conference that should be as purposeful in promoting its middle class as it does its leading programs.
Big Ten vs. SEC
Modern college football cannot help but fall in love with agendas, few more so than the ones at odds in the Big Ten-SEC rivalry that defines the sport.
Cignetti’s conference has been winning that argument where it matters most. IU’s third-year coach delivered his media-day podium remarks standing just to the left of three College Football Playoff national championship trophies — the most recent belonging to his program — displayed as an unsubtle reminder that the Big Ten has exercised a monopoly on late-January confetti showers each of the last three seasons.
Its most recent national champion happily drove that point home with his closing statement Thursday.
“The Big Ten is the best league in college football,” Cignetti said. “A lot of really good football teams. It’s hard to win on the road, very physical football teams, very well-coached. It definitely prepares you for the Playoffs.
“There’s no doubt about it. The numbers speak for themselves.”
He’s right. They do. So why does the SEC keep winning the strength-of-schedule argument?
Shift in dominance
Fans in this part of America will cry ESPN bias as an answer to that question. They’ll point to what are perceived as artificially inflated preseason numbers that fuel an equally artificial argument:
SEC teams are the best, so their schedules are the toughest, and their schedules are the toughest because their teams are the best. Logic that’s circular to the point of being airtight.
For a long time, the SEC won that argument because it also won the more important one. Between 2006-22, the league claimed 13 national championships in football, spread across five different programs.
Anyone claiming then that the SEC was the best conference in college football was right. Now, Cignetti is too — that dominance has shifted.
Why SEC sets the agenda
The SEC has not won a national title since 2022 (Georgia). The conference hasn’t even played for one since then.
Last year, five SEC teams made the Playoff, almost certainly a nod to that perceived depth. Those five teams finished a combined 3-5, their only wins coming against either other SEC teams, or Group-of-Five opponents.
These are all dangerously simple samples to use in illustrating wider trends. But the SEC got away with that exact behavior for years, because when it won at the top of the sport, it was allowed to set the agenda everywhere else too.
Its relative drought now is making that argument more difficult to stomach. What was once criticism reserved for message boards and social media has begun to break contain.
“At some point these FPIs and all these algorithms, you think, will catch up,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said, speaking on a parallel track during ACC media days earlier this month. “Whenever some of y’all figure out how we can have preseason strength-of-schedules and power rankings, before anybody has played a game, y’all let me know.”
Big Ten, top to bottom
Lashlee, who led SMU to the Playoff in 2024, was of course advocating for his own conference. His argument would still have been well-received in Chicago this week.
As, too, should have Cignetti’s — the Big Ten needs to get better at this.
“Bob Chesney is going to get UCLA going,” Cignetti said, continuing his answer during his breakout session. “Matt Rhule got really close at Nebraska. I know I’m missing people, so I don’t want to name too many, (but) Washington is tough, when you go out there and play, and it’s so loud and tough.
“Top to bottom, like I said, we let our actions speak for us.”
There’s a bottom-line world wherein that’s fine. But lean times will invariably come, as the SEC can now attest.
When they do, winning the argument won’t make up for winning the games, but it will keep one’s preferred narrative in the mainstream long enough to fix those results.
Cignetti finished his podium comments by twisting the knife a touch on the SEC — it’s become sport for him at this event — drawing a fresh wave of anger from his Southern cousins.
“We don’t run a hype machine up here in the Midwest,” he said. “We believe everything is earned, not given. When we fall short, we say we fell short. We don’t cry a river, whine and complain.
“That’s why we’re the best.”
He’s right, right now. But eventually, the good times will slow. That’s when the Big Ten will need that hype machine. It will need to be ready to tell the story of its Iowas, Washingtons and UCLAs.
The hardware riding shotgun next to Cignetti on Thursday means winning the argument and controlling the narrative, something that’s easy to do in good weather. When it turns rough, the Big Ten will want to have established the same respect for its middle class the SEC now leans on.
It needs more comments like the ones Cignetti made Thursday. It needs to advocate for the whole, not just the top. The depth is there, it’s real, it deserves that respect and, most importantly, it might come in handy someday.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Big Ten needs to follow Curt Cignetti’s lead on one specific issue to maintain its success
Reporting by Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
