MIAMI GARDENS, FL – The shocking news would come soon enough, but not now. Not after the game.
Not you, Curt Cignetti.
“Good question,” the perpetually disgruntled Indiana football coach blurted Monday night during his postgame news conference when he was asked – this was the first question after the Hoosiers’ 27-21 victory against Miami in the 2025 College Football Playoff national championship game – how he would allow himself to enjoy this accomplishment.
“Because I’ll be dealing with underclassmen going to the NFL tomorrow and who knows what else. And if I was smart, I’d probably retire. Then I’d really be a story.”
Don’t do that, Cig!
Celebrate IU’s season with these books, special sections!
And no, he’s not doing that.
“But we need the money,” Cignetti continued, laughing and teasing, his way of reassuring the IU fan base that he wasn’t serious about retiring. “What would I do? What would I do?”
“We’ll be back at it,” he said. “I love what I do. I love football. I’m a football guy. I don’t have many other things that I do besides family…”
Like that, order was restored. Curt Cignetti isn’t going anywhere, which means #iufb isn’t going anywhere.
Can’t say the same for everybody, though.
Doyel from CFP final: Even Cignetti is asking, “Did you ever think this was possible?!?”
Alberto Mendoza into the transfer portal
The Hoosiers, a two-Mendoza team in 2025, apparently will have a zero-Mendoza balance in 2026.
Heisman-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza is the presumptive first overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, and his younger brother Alberto – after telling reporters and even the coaching staff that he would return next season – has entered the transfer portal.
That news broke within hours of the Hoosiers’ win against Miami.
Cignetti has been a QB kingmaker, helping each of his last six quarterbacks – at James Madison and IU – earn significant individual postseason hardware. Alberto Mendoza, the Hoosiers’ backup QB as a redshirt freshman, seemed next after completing 18 of 24 passes for 286 yards, five touchdowns and an interception. He ran 13 times for 190 yards, a whopping 14.6-yard average.
But then…
Cignetti recently secured a transfer-portal commitment from TCU quarterback Josh Hoover, a rising redshirt senior who will be college football’s leading returning passer with 9,629 yards – and second with 71 touchdown passes.
After the addition of Hoover, Alberto Mendoza told anyone who asked that he’d stay in Bloomington. Cignetti sounded unconvinced two days before the CFP title game, when he was asked about Alberto, who reportedly committed to Georgia Tech on Tuesday, during his final pregame news conference.
“Yeah,” Cig said, “I think his words were: ‘I’ll stay a year, but (Hoover) has got to go out early (into the 2027 NFL Draft) and then I’m the guy.’
“We’ll see what happens there with Alberto. I think he’s got a good future. I like him a lot as a player. We’ll see what the future holds.”
Speaking of that…
How long will Curt Cignetti coach IU?
For two years folks have been trying to understand what’s so right about Cignetti. Like, how is he THIS good? Get online, do what Cignetti once suggested – “Google me” – and the search engine practically types in the question for you. Because everybody wants to know:
What makes Curt Cignetti so good?
The worst thing about Cignetti? What’s wrong about him? That one’s easy: He’s too old.
Oh stop it. You know what I mean. At 64, he’s clearly approaching retirement age – and if you’re an IU football fan, that’s a little scary. Because what happens next? What happens to Indiana football after he retires? Because it’s coming soon. Has to be. The guy turns 65 in June, before the 2026 college football season. That’s retirement age.
And now, the good news:
It comes in the form of a conversation IU offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan was having with a reporter during a news conference two days before the title game. The reporter’s asking Shanahan about Cignetti’s love of the game, and Shanahan says, “He eats, sleeps and breathes football.”
Now the reporter wants to know something, anything, about Cignetti away from football. Music, for example. Does he have any favorites?
“No,” Shanahan said. “He’s all ball.”
Which led to the follow-up, the reporter asking Shanahan if he can “see (Cignetti) doing this for another 20 years?”
Pay attention to Mike Shanahan, who has been with Cignetti since 2016 – following him from IUP to Elon to James Madison to IU – and surely knows him as well as anyone.
“I don’t see how he could give it up,” Shanahan said. “I know he loves football too much. He’s such a competitor.”
Pay closer attention.
“I wouldn’t be shocked at all,” Shanahan said, “if this thing went well beyond another eight, nine, 10, 15 years.”
Sleep well, IU fans.
But would Curt Cignetti leave for the NFL?
Curt Cignetti is a football lifer from Western Pennsylvania, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers job is open. Cignetti is the hottest coach in football, at any level.
Add two and two, and you get the scariest “four” of your life.
Until you realize Cignetti has already thrown water on that particular piece of arithmetic. He was asked this week about the NFL, specifically about jobs in Pennsylvania.
Pay attention.
“I mean, I’m not an NFL guy,” Cignetti said. “I made that decision (at) NC State in 2000. I had a chance to go with the Packers.”
Doyel in 2024: Indiana’s Curt Cignetti learned faith, family, football from dad Frank
Cignetti was referencing the time Packers coach Mike Sherman offered him a job coaching quarterbacks for the Packers. The Packers’ QB in 2000? Brett Favre.
Now, pay closer attention.
“Favre was in his heyday,” Cignetti said. “I think Darrell Bevell ended up taking the job. I declined the opportunity. I almost took it. That’s when I made the final decision, and I’ve always been more of a college football guy.”
Sleep well, IU fans.
Cignetti busts Mark Cuban’s chops
Did you see the way Cignetti handled a reporter’s question about the financial contribution of former Dallas Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban, one of the richest IU alums in the world? Eye-opening, to say the least.
But first, some context: Mark Cuban has enjoyed being asked, and answering in the affirmative, about contributing to the IU football war chest. The implication – the assumption people have been making – is that Cuban has played a major role in IU’s surge. Front Office Sports emailed Cuban, asking him about donating to IU athletics in 2024 and ’25.
“I’m like investing in an entrepreneur in ‘Shark Tank,’” Cuban emailed back. “Let’s just say they are happier this year than last year.”
That story broke two weeks ago. Cignetti was asked this week about Cuban. Specifically, “What it’s like to have that level of support?’”
Cignetti wasn’t dismissive. But he wasn’t effusive, either.
“Mark Cuban has gotten involved, too – at a level,” Cignetti said. “If Mark Cuban wanted to give $10 million, that would be like me donating $10,000. But we’re glad that he’s involved. If he keeps doubling his donation, it’ll be big one day.”
That sounds how it sounds, but Cignetti softened it – and added this bizarre factoid.
“Mark Cuban is a very visible guy, from western PA – born in the same hospital, him and I,” Cignetti said. “We kind of hit it off right off the bat.”
Still, Cignetti bristles at the idea that IU bought this national championship, among the ridiculous assertions some are launching at the Hoosiers to understand, and minimize, this team. Hear the one about IU cheating? Absurd.
After all the talk about Cuban, and Indiana’s bottomless pocketbook, Cignetti used his postgame interview Monday night to fight back.
“I would like to say our NIL is nowhere near where people think it is,” he said. “You can throw that out.”
Doyel: Indiana football, cheating? What a joke, and compliment to Curt Cignetti’s team
One-liners from Indiana’s trip to CFP title game
I could write forever about this team, but let’s streamline things like so:
∎ When James Madison coach Curt Cignetti left for the IU job in December 2023, his star receiver at JMU, Elijah Sarratt, entered the transfer portal with zero plans to follow Cignetti to Bloomington “I’ll be honest,” Sarratt said, “when I left JMU, I was like, I’m not going to come to Indiana. I want to go somewhere warm (like) South Carolina. … I told coach Cig about some other visits I wanted to go to. He said, ‘That’s not a good idea.’ Shook his hand, and I committed here.”
∎ One more from Sarratt, who had 62 catches for 802 yards and an NCAA-best 15 touchdowns but fell short of one goal: “I wanted to be a Biletnikoff (Award Trophy) winner. Shoutout to the guy who won it. Great receiver. But that was one of my goals.”
∎ Asked for a Fernando Mendoza story, IU linebacker Aiden Fisher offered a doozy: “One of my favorite stories about Fernando – just to speak to his work ethic – is he locked himself in our facility one time because he was there too late. I think it was, like, 11:30 (p.m.) and he’s there watching film, and at a certain point the locks shut off because nobody is in there, and he locked himself in the staircase just because he was there too long.”
∎ Asked about cornerback D’Angelo Ponds, Cignetti said: “Ponds is a player, he’s a great player. He might be the best player I’ve ever coached that was with me throughout his entire career in terms of consistency, production.”
∎ Asked about Cignetti’s famous focus on football, IU offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan came up with a brief exception: “I know there was one time he was watching ‘Game of Thrones.’ That may have been when we were at Elon.”
∎ Asked about Miami star receiver Malachi Toney, IU defensive coordinator Bryant Haines planted seeds for the CFP officiating crew: “One of (Toney’s) best skill sets is the one that you didn’t mention. He can block. This dude can block his tail off, and holds a lot too. But hey, he’s just competing. He’s a great football player.”
∎ One more from Haines, who was a GA at Indiana under Kevin Wilson in 2012, and was asked about how far the IU program has come since then.
“It’s night and day,” Haines said. “And I don’t say that lightly. It didn’t mean anything to be an Indiana football player as a GA here. It didn’t mean anything to be a GA. It didn’t mean anything to be a coach. It was a program that was still trying to get out of the mud, I think.
“Now, I think that staff, and coach Wilson in particular, were on the forefront of getting it out of that place. So I always saw the value in this place. I knew that it could take off. I remember telling coach Cignetti when he first pulled me in his office and it was about to go down – I said, ‘That place can take off.’”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: IU football, like Curt Cignetti, is here to stay. Alberto Mendoza, however…
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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