BLOOMINGTON — Almost two years ago now, Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti walked to the podium at his first Big Ten media days aware of what his audience was waiting to hear.
By then already famous for “Purdue sucks” and “I win. Google me,” Cignetti deadpanned that everyone inside Lucas Oil Stadium that day was “waiting for me to say something crazy.” When reflecting upon Indiana being picked to finish next-to-last in the conference that summer, he pointed out his program had played for a conference title the previous two times it had been so doubted then delivered what, to the room at the time, seemed like a light-hearted punchline.
It wasn’t.
“I’m not into making predictions,” he said that day. “That’s just a historical fact.”
Now, roughly 24 months later, Cignetti’s words that day — like so many of his public pronouncements — look increasingly prescient. He’s spent that time making all kinds of remarkable history, with Friday’s news just the latest example.
When five-star Lawrence North wide receiver Monshun Sales picked the Hoosiers over Alabama, Ohio State, Texas and a host of other blue-blood suitors, live on “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN, he became the highest-rated commitment in IU football history, and the Hoosiers’ first five-star.
Sales also became the latest standard bearer for what Cignetti was not-so-subtly signaling on that July day two years ago: He came to Indiana meaning business, and anyone doubting that would come to regret it.
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How Monshun Sales makes history for IU football
Sales’ commitment is a landmark moment for a program that has fought and lost the battle for elite players for so much of its history. Among the many lessons learned from Indiana’s success across the last two seasons has been just how much of a gap existed previously between the Hoosiers’ aggregate talent, historically speaking, what was required to compete at a genuinely championship level.
Widely regarded as a five-star prospect among the best in his class, at any position, Sales possesses the quality that bridges that gap. His commitment sends a signal, loud and clear, that Indiana is equipped to secure such talent, regardless of its competition.
Yes, Sales lives in Indianapolis, handing IU something of a geographic advantage. But the long arc of this program’s history tells us that’s rarely been enough to push the Hoosiers past college football’s best. Indiana could land talented in-state players, and at times even keep itself in the running for truly elite prospects, but when Ohio State or Michigan or Notre Dame or a top-line SEC school got involved, IU eventually got pushed to the side.
Not this time.
Curt Cignetti laid groundwork for these landmark moments
Yet there was a small irony in the landmark feel of Sales’ announcement Friday afternoon.
The chicken-and-egg argument has swirled around Indiana football since time immemorial, in any number of ways. Which had to come first, diehard fan support or consistent success? Program continuity or institutional investment? Elite talent or elite results?
Cignetti answered that particular question emphatically, and in so doing set his program up for moments like this.
In the past, when Indiana managed to fight off perceived heavyweights for promising high school players, it was cast as an effort to become something more than its modest history. Kevin Wilson’s 2013 class, for example, anchored by a clutch of talented in-state players who turned down more successful programs for Bloomington, was seen that way.
And in fairness, some of those have delivered on their promise. Wilson, Terry Hoeppner and Tom Allen each signed classes that underpinned improved results as they matured.
Before Cignetti’s arrival, Sales’ commitment would be cast in a similar light — an elite player buying into a brighter future at a program that needed such talent to shorten the gap between itself and teams with deeper wells of talent and more illustrious histories. That needed players like Sales to believe in a version of that future that might not exist.
That’s not the case anymore.
Curt Cignetti’s warning to the Big Ten, college football
Friday afternoon was the latest manifestation of that warning Cignetti made two years prior. Indiana football would not be anymore what it had been before his arrival.
His swiftness at making good on that promise brought down a fury onto college football the sport is still reckoning with, in every imaginable way. To take IU from what it was at his arrival to where it is now has delivered a sort of system shock, of which Sales’ commitment is the latest symptom.
This is not Indiana punching up, or Indiana trying to change its fortunes, or Indiana seeking a new station. This is Indiana, reigning Big Ten and national champion, eager to do it again, and more than willing to throw its newfound weight around accordingly.
Fanbases spurned by Sales’ decision will probably claim Indiana simply paid top dollar, that this decision was driven purely by the largest offer on the table. It’s the new version of an old coping mechanism familiar to any lost recruitment.
And to be clear, Indiana will lose its share of recruits. Already this cycle, the Hoosiers had then lost Ohio All-American Monsanna Torbert, who eventually flipped to Michigan. Nobody bats 1.000 in recruiting, and nothing is final until signing day.
But these are the waters the Hoosiers are swimming in now. Michigan, Alabama, Texas, Ohio State — this is the company they keep, the exclusive club they’ve earned their way into.
IU football took Monshun Sales’ commitment Friday not hoping, but expecting. He does not represent some vague, hypothetical future, because that future has already arrived. He, like the classmates he now joins in 2027, becomes a chief steward of Indiana’s newfound status, the next generation the Hoosiers will expect to deliver on the same bold ambition Cignetti instilled virtually from the day he arrived.
This is Indiana football now. Just like Curt Cignetti promised.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Curt Cignetti makes good on Indiana football promise; Monshun Sales’ commitment is latest example
Reporting by Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
