Thank you, Curt Cignetti, for an unforgettable two years of Indiana football.
In the fourth football game of my freshman year, Indiana beat the University of Akron 29-27 in four overtimes. The couple of hundred students who hadn’t gone back to the tailgating fields ran back and forth across the bleachers, depending on which end the Hoosiers were playing toward.
There were no packed aisles or ushers to slow us down, so we moved around with ease. When Indiana scored the two-point conversion to win, I thought it might be the most fun I’d ever have at an Indiana football game.
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be wrong.
That 2023 season ended in disaster, with the Hoosiers losing seven of their final eight games. I wasn’t disappointed — or even surprised. Why would I be? It was the same old story, plus I watched Indiana beat Akron in an amazing game in what was, at the time, the best atmosphere I’d experienced at Memorial Stadium. Shortly after the season ended, Indiana fired former head coach Tom Allen and hired Cignetti to replace him.
Some people in Bloomington were unhappy with the hiring. Why should fans trust someone who, at that point, had coached Division II football and James Madison University? But at his National Signing Day press conference, he delivered the first of many one-liners we’d come to love him for: “It's pretty simple. I win. Google me."
Something shifted that day. And it has only become more noticeable as the team continues to win. Since Cignetti was hired, Indiana has only lost two games, both during the 2024-25 season. The losses were to two teams that made the national championship that year. Indiana made the college football playoffs twice, secured the Big Ten Championship by beating Ohio State and won the national championship against the University of Miami. Those are just three of the many accomplishments I could highlight.
What makes this season different isn’t just the wins; it’s the absence of the familiar anxiety Indiana football fans have carried for years. For as long as I can remember, cheering for Indiana meant waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was never a matter of if something would go wrong, but when.
Maybe it was former Hoosiers quarterback Michael Penix Jr. going down with yet another injury in 2018 and 2020. Maybe it was Duke University beating the Hoosiers in the Pinstripe Bowl on a last-second field goal in 2015. Even last season, one of the best in program history at the time, ended with losses to the two best teams they faced.
This year felt different. Even in close games, that same dread never crept in. The instinct to brace for disappointment just wasn’t there. Instead of expecting a collapse, we found ourselves expecting a response from a team we’ve grown to trust in those big moments.
The Hoosiers were a dominant, yet battle-tested team, and that combination mattered. It’s why when Indiana played Miami in the College Football Playoff National Championship, panic was limited, even when the game tightened. We knew the moment would come when Indiana would make the play like the blocked punt, the heroic run and finally the interception that sealed it.
For the first time, being an Indiana football fan doesn’t feel like an exercise in willpower. It feels like a privilege. We walk into Memorial Stadium expecting to compete, expecting to respond and most important of all, expecting to win. That mindset didn’t appear overnight, and it didn’t happen by accident. It came from a coach who told us exactly who he was from the start and proved it on the field.
So, thank you, coach Cig. Thank you for changing the standard of Indiana football. Thank you for making Saturdays in Bloomington about more than just tailgates. Thank you for giving students, alumni and lifelong fans like me memories that go far beyond a four-overtime win over Akron.
Jack Davis (he/him) is a junior majoring in media with a sports concentration and pursuing a minor in folklore and ethnomusicology and a certificate in journalism.
