Indiana football opens a 2026 season full of firsts at noon Saturday against the University of North Texas. It is the first time the Hoosiers will open a campaign as the defending national champions. They begin the year as No. 6 in the nation –– the program’s highest preseason ranking ever. Home tickets for the 2026 season are completely sold out for the first time since 1969.
Beyond the accolades, Indiana’s season opener Saturday will be unlike any head coach Curt Cignetti has been a part of.
Following the departure of former head coach Eric Morris in the offseason, the Mean Green overhauled their roster. The team returns zero starters from the 2025 season and brought in 52 players through the transfer portal under new head coach Neal Brown. Nobody has ever seen this collection of players and staff on the field in a regular season game.
Brown joined North Texas after serving as the head coach at Troy University and West Virginia University from 2015-2024. He was the special assistant to the head coach at the University of Texas at Austin in 2025.
The Mean Green’s defense consists of new personnel and schemes with the hiring of defensive coordinator Matt Powledge in December 2025. Powledge previously spent three seasons running Baylor University’s defense.
For most Week 1 opponents, coaches can heavily rely on film from the previous season to prepare. Instead, without Mean Green roster turnover, Cignetti has had to piece together a gameplan by studying tape from multiple different programs.
“On the offensive side of the ball, it’s been a lot of Baylor tape, and on the defensive side of the ball, a lot of West Virginia tape and some Texas maybe,” Cignetti said Monday.
The unusual preparation has made the matchup unlike anything Cignetti, who enters his 16th season as a collegiate head coach, has experienced.
“So it is different now. And have never played in a game quite like this one where there’s just so many new faces,” Cignetti said.
Still, Cignetti and his staff will see a familiar face Saturday.
Now-North Texas fifth-year quarterback Tayven Jackson played for the Hoosiers in Cignetti’s first year with the program in 2024. Jackson made his lone start that season against Washington, passing for 124 yards and a touchdown en route to a 31-14 victory.
Following the 2024 season, Jackson transferred to the University of Central Florida before moving to North Texas for 2026. The former Hoosier was announced as the Mean Green’s starting quarterback for their Week 1 game against Indiana on Aug. 26.
“He’s very talented,” Cignetti said about Jackson on Monday. “He’s got a live arm. He can run. He’s a good athlete. Started a number of games last season. So, he’s a good player.”
Jackson provides Indiana with a sense of familiarity in a matchup otherwise defined by uncertainty.
Indiana enters Saturday with expectations that Cignetti and the program have never faced; The Hoosiers are defending champions, ranked sixth nationally and open the season in front of a sellout crowd. Meanwhile, the opponent on the field will be difficult to prepare for in a conventional way.
Yet Indiana is maintaining an approach that stuck with the program throughout fall camp.
“I think our whole thing has always been keeping the main thing the main thing and controlling the controllables,” Cignetti said. “It’s all about preparing to the best of our ability.”
Follow reporters Conor Banks (@Conorbanks06 and conbanks@iu.edu) and Nathan Shriberg (@NShriberg and naashri@iu.edu) and columnist Elakai Anela (@elakai_anela and eanela@iu.edu) for updates throughout the Indiana football season.
