CHICAGO — Curt Cignetti came prepared.
Taking his first turn through Big Ten media days as a national champion, the Indiana football coach held tightly to the maxims that got him to that stage in the first place. He promised he was “stalking complacency.” He emphasized once again his confidence in his blueprint. He even tossed a casual grenade at the SEC, something that’s become a habit for Cignetti at this event.
“We don’t run a hype machine up here in the Midwest,” Cignetti said with his final comments from the podium. “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.”
No one was better last season than Cignetti’s Indiana, a team detractors declared was built by the portal and on the backs of James Madison transfers that transplanted a culture Cignetti might struggle to maintain without them.
Most of those players are gone now. Just one of the 13 that followed Cignetti from Harrisonburg remains in Bloomington. Which begs the very question Cignetti came to Chicago prepared to answer Thursday.
“I’m going to get asked about the JMU guys,” he said. “All the guys that have been with us for two years that were at Indiana my first year, they’re the JMU guys.”
Cignetti, translated: The core of my first championship team might be gone, but the culture that nurtured it remains as strong as it needs to be.
Big Ten respect for IU football widespread
The Big Ten itself had no problem feting the team Cignetti parted ways with last winter, nor the man who built it in the first place.
Rutgers coach Greg Schiano expressed “much respect” for what Cignetti has accomplished in just two years at IU. Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, the conference’s elder statesman, declared he’s “never seen film where (Cignetti’s Hoosiers) don’t play hard and don’t compete hard.”
Bret Bielema, who got the sharp end of a 53-point loss to Indiana last September in Bloomington, minced the fewest words.
“That,” Bielema told reporters earlier in the week, “is single-handedly the most impressive story that I’ve witnessed in my college career.”
Cignetti’s unflappable confidence masks the reality that, like any good coach, he’s never going to be comfortable taking on board that kind of praise. One of his old bosses used to call it “rat poison,” and Cignetti has himself used Nick Saban’s phrase to describe the kind of adoration that can incubate the complacency Cignetti so fears.
There’s some distance to travel, though, between acknowledging such compliments and falling victim to them. Indiana navigated those waters well this time a year ago, in the wake of what at the time felt like such a historic season in Bloomington. Now, Cignetti will attempt the same again.
Cignetti staying focused on the field
He’s still not interested in being a statesman.
College football — and college sports more widely — has/have devolved into a war of agendas. Playoff expansion, Congressional action, these aren’t often topics a coach who’s said in the past he mostly just wants rules clarity will get drawn into, even in a setting like this.
“I really have a lot of faith and belief in (Big Ten commissioner) Tony (Petitti),” Cignetti said Thursday. “That’s above my paygrade. I have no control. For me to offer an opinion would just muddy the water.”
Cignetti’s focus will always and forever be internal. The man who estimates he spends 95% of his free time in his office watching film is obsessed with the small details that turn good teams into great ones.
Across the last two seasons, some of Cignetti’s chief allies in that effort were ones he brought with him from James Madison.
Fully six members of his coaching staff joined him when he traded Harrisonburg for Bloomington, as did strength coach Derek Owings. Importantly, a baker’s dozen players — across seven position rooms — did the same.
Together, their collective ambition and determination remade Indiana football from a perennial loser into a national champion. Some of those coaches have come and gone (and, in Tino Sunseri’s case, returned again). Most of Cignetti’s former Dukes-turned-Hoosiers are now graduated.
Which made the question Cignetti himself arrived in Chicago prepared for a fair one. And his answer all the more telling.
‘Good culture’ reflected in new generation for Indiana
The players he brought with him on this trip might as well have done that for him.
Of the three current Hoosiers representing Indiana this week in Chicago, two signed for Tom Allen and stayed through the coaching change. Isaiah Jones earned All-Big Ten honors at linebacker. Carter Smith was selected the conference’s best offensive lineman last season.
The third member of their party, defensive tackle Tyrique Tucker, stands as the last of those 13 James Madison transfers on roster. Yet even he counts more as Hoosier than Duke now, having played more of his career and enjoyed more of his success in cream and crimson.
Sharply dressed and smart with their answers, all three players acquitted themselves and represented their program well this week, each one reflecting Cignetti’s assessment before they met their first microphone in Chicago.
“We have a good culture,” IU’s third-year coach said.
Across Cignetti’s first two seasons in Bloomington, that culture was grounded in players who knew Cignetti better than they did Indiana. Ones who embraced what it meant to be a Hoosier, but also redefined that same idea, shaping IU football into a championship-level powerhouse.
Most of those players are gone now. The cultural foundations they left behind, Cignetti knows, are more important than any one of them, and Cignetti is confident those foundations remain rock solid.
Herald-Times reporter Mike Niziolek contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Curt Cignetti’s James Madison generation is mostly gone. Why he’s confident in what’s next
Reporting by Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
