college football history

Curt Cignetti knows winning. No matter where he finds himself, whether it’s James Madison or with the Division II IUP Crimson Hawks, success follows him. Since getting the opportunity to lead a program, Cignetti has never had a losing season.

When Indiana hired him in November 2023, the Hoosiers were the program with the most all-time losses in college football history, and ended the season with a 3-9 record under Tom Allen.

It wasn’t a work in progress, the Hoosiers football program needed to be rebuilt.

On New Year’s Day, Indiana will face Alabama in the highly anticipated Rose Bowl matchup. The Crimson Tide have a rich postseason history and a tradition of championships, but the Hoosiers are the favorites to win.

That is the Cignetti effect.

In two years, he transformed the program from an unranked team, spending most of its time at the bottom of the Big Ten Conference, to the No. 1 team in the country with a Heisman-winning quarterback, Fernando Mendoza.

“When he speaks, it means something,” Indiana linebacker Isaiah Jones said.

“He’s not gonna go around and hype you up, tell you something you want to hear, he’ll tell you what you need to hear and that’s what makes him so special as a coach.”

That kind of tough love echoes throughout the team, Jones said. Whether it’s the fifth-string linebacker or the starting linebacker, Cignetti and his staff coach everyone the same way. That is one of the reasons his players trust him and bought into his philosophy.

“All the coaches want to see you be the best version of yourself,” Jones said. “But you can’t do that if you’re sugarcoating it.”

Cignetti’s coaching style has turned a starting lineup that consists of more lightly recruited players than five-star prospects into the nation’s No. 1 team.

Their surprise arrival at college football’s biggest stage has fired up the Hoosiers.

Indiana defensive back D’Angelo Ponds answers questions during a new conference at the Rose Bowl on Tuesday.

(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)

“It’s definitely a chip on our shoulder,” Indiana cornerback D’Angelo Ponds said. “Just to prove to the coaches that they missed out on the opportunity with us.”

The Hoosiers had the past three weeks off, earning a first-round College Football Playoff bye. Leading up to their quarterfinal showdown with Alabama in Pasadena, before their opponent was known, Cignetti made it a point to focus on how the Hoosiers could feature the best offense and defense in the country. He wanted players to focus on their own work rather than who they would be playing.

“In every single phase, in every single facet of the way that we practice and prepare, it’s all about being the best version of us, and not so much our opponent,” Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher said.

But as soon as Alabama clinched its ticket to the Rose Bowl, the preparation flipped.

“Once we understood who the opponent was, it just kind of upped a notch,” Fisher said. “[Cignetti’s] done a great job of blocking out the noise, we don’t hear anything in the media, really.”

He wants his team to be present during their preparation, never taking a day for granted and getting their bodies and mindset right.

“He always says, at the later points in the season, it’s about who shows up ready to play, who’s the most prepared,” Indiana center Pat Coogan said.

The success of the team started with his recruitment. Regardless of which players leave or enter the locker room, Cignetti makes sure everyone is focused on the same end goal — winning.

“We are all cut from the same cloth,” Coogan said. “That’s why I think this locker room bonds so well, and why we’ve had success, no matter how many people have transferred.”

Fans flying into Pasadena talk about the ghost of the past, Fisher said. The Hoosiers last made an appearance in the Rose Bowl in 1968 when they lost to USC. A win on New Year’s Day will help bolster the football culture in Indiana, but the team understands it needs to focus on Thursday’s game against Alabama and ignore the bigger picture.

“It’s a privilege and honor to play in the Rose Bowl,” Fisher said. “But we’re still playing a football game of four quarters that we have to go and win.”

The century-old rivalry series between USC and Notre Dame is taking a few years off, and as far as Lincoln Riley is concerned, that’s the fault of the Irish.

In his first public comments since the series was officially put on hiatus, the USC coach put the blame squarely on Notre Dame for not accepting USC’s most recent offer to continue the rivalry, which would have moved the 2026 game, usually scheduled in November, to the very beginning of the season.

“It’s pretty simple,” Riley said Monday, ahead of USC’s bowl matchup with Texas Christian. “We both worked for months to try to find a solution. Notre Dame was very vocal about the fact that they would play us anytime, anywhere.

“Jen Cohen, our AD, went back to Notre Dame roughly a couple of weeks ago with a scenario and a proposal that would extend the series for the next two years. We took Notre Dame at their word that they would play us anytime, anywhere. That proposal was rejected.

“Not only was it rejected, but five minutes after we got the call, it was announced they scheduled another opponent, which I’ll give them credit, that might be the fastest scheduling act in college football history.”

The Times reported last week that the Playoff selection earlier this month proved to be a turning point for USC’s administration in talks with Notre Dame. The realization that the Irish — by virtue of a side agreement with the College Football Playoff committee that hands them a bid if ranked in the top 12 — would have gotten into the field over Miami especially gave USC pause.

That’s when Cohen returned to Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua with an offer for the rivals to face off in the season opener. Notre Dame instead scheduled Brigham Young to fill that vacancy over the next two seasons.

Riley has been roundly criticized for his part in the rivalry’s potential demise after he suggested in August 2024 that the annual series could be in danger, if USC proved too much of a hurdle in the Trojans’ path to the College Football Playoff.

In the spring, as negotiations between the two schools stalled and the public pointed fingers at Riley and USC, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said that continuing the rivalry was “pretty black and white for me.”

“I want to play them every single year,” Freeman said. “You want my opinion? I want to play them every single year. When? I don’t care. I don’t care when we play them: Start of the season, middle of the season, end of the season. I don’t care. I want to play USC every year because I think it’s great for college football.”

After initially holding firm on its intent to renegotiate terms of the rivalry year-to-year, so as to wait on changes to the College Football Playoff format, USC sent an amended offer to Notre Dame before the season that would have extended the series for two seasons. But Notre Dame wanted a longer deal.

The two schools nearly came to an agreement in October, around their final meeting in South Bend. USC had made clear that it wanted to play the game earlier in the season, but was warming up to the idea of continuing the series as is through 2027.

USC decided to dig its heels in after Selection Sunday, returning to USC with a final offer to play early in the 2026 season. Notre Dame declined.

“The fact is very, very clear, this can all be settled very quickly,” Riley said. “Had Notre Dame lived up to their word and played us anytime, anywhere, we would be playing in the next two years, and looking ahead after that, hopefully continuing the series.

“They did not follow through on it, thus we are not playing them the next couple years. We’re hopeful something can be worked out in the future. That would be fantastic. We at SC would love for the game to continue. We have no problem following through on our promises in the future.”

It’ll be a while before those negotiations start up again. The next window in which USC could play Notre Dame is during the 2030 season.

No. 1 Indiana booked its ticket to the College Football Playoff quarterfinals on Dec. 6 after defeating Ohio State 13-10 in the Big Ten championship game. With such a long gap before its New Year’s Day matchup against No. 9 Alabama in the Rose Bowl, Indiana offensive lineman Carter Smith said the Hoosiers are seeking a balance in preparing while still practicing with intensity.

“It’s all about keeping the speed of the game,” Smith said Saturday. “The biggest thing for us in the offensive line room has been going like it’s a game, every single breath, because we know that being away from the game for so long can affect that.”

The first two weeks of preparation were lighter workouts as the Hoosiers recovered from the season, tight end Riley Nowakowski said. Without knowing their opponent, the Hoosiers didn’t want to overwork older players. Instead the coaching staff gave younger players opportunities to get reps during practice.

But after Alabama punched its ticket to the Rose Bowl, the mentality changed.

“We really got into game prep and I think that’s kind of how you do it. … You start to really lock in and get back into normal game-speed stuff and game type of practices,” Nowakowski said. “I think it’s important to stay locked in mentally.”

Even with the bright lights of the Rose Bowl, Indiana offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan said the pressure will not be overwhelming.

“There might be a slight adjustment early in the game, but I feel like our guys will be ready to go and the experience within our group will help us there as well,” he said.