Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti has led the team to a 15-0 record and a spot in the 2026 College Football Playoff championship.
Cignetti’s success is partly attributed to his detailed talent evaluation, focusing on specifics like a player’s flexibility and avoiding ‘fatal flaws.’
His exacting standards and focus on perfection have influenced his players, including Heisman-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza.
People keep asking what’s happening at Indiana football — how the Hoosiers have gone from the all-time losingest program in Division I to their current 15-0 record, No. 1 ranking and spot in 2026 College Football Playoff championship game Monday night against Miami. People ask: How? What? Why?
What they don’t ask: Who?
Another thing they don’t ask: When?
Curt Cignetti, that’s who. And Nov. 30, 2023 — the day he became the IU football coach — is when.
But the other questions remain. Google is no help, and admit it: You tried Google. So did hundreds or thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of other folks. See for yourself. Plug “Curt Cignetti” into Google, and see what pops up. Google knows what it is asked, over and over and over, so it offers the question before you can type it. Because, as Google will tell you:
People also ask:
What makes Curt Cignetti so good?
Google can’t tell you that. Nobody can, and let’s be honest: If the answer were obvious, everyone else would do it. Well, someone else would do it. But nobody else is. Nobody else can. Nobody has ever done what Cignetti has done, taking the lowliest football program in college football history and — in just two years — leading it to the 2026 CFP title game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. Florida.
Nobody else has come close.
Study Cignetti for the past two years, watch him and read as much about him as you can, and you’ll see some things. Talk to folks who know him best, and you’ll hear some things. Put it all together, and you’ll get — well, you won’t get the answer to the question.
What makes Curt Cignetti so good?
But you’ll get a hint.
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Curt Cignetti’s recruiting philosophy
It has something to do with ankles, hips and knees. With football being a stop-and-start game. With duck feet, and other fatal flaws.
Those are some of Cignetti’s phrases when it comes to his specialty … well, one of his specialties: talent evaluation. He studies recruits, whether in high school or the transfer portal, the way an IRS auditor studies your tax return. He’s not just looking for what’s right. He’s looking for what’s wrong.
Coaches can get seduced by a recruit’s potential — and Cignetti will tell you he’s been there, done that — but at age 64 he’s putting to work all he has learned in a lifetime of football: 42 years in coaching and the 22 years before that, being raised to play quarterback at West Virginia by his legendary coaching father, Frank Cignetti Sr.
For example: Curt Cignetti will be talking to an IU staff member about a recruit, and he’ll shut down any further consideration without a word. He’ll just put his hands into a “V” shape.
‘Duck feet,’ Pat Kuntz, Indiana’s defensive tackles coach and a 2005 Roncalli grad, told ESPN. ‘He picks up on those things. You wouldn’t see it at first, and then he looks at you and gives you the signal, and then you recheck it.’
Cignetti isn’t perfect in recruiting — show me someone who is — but the numbers suggest he’s better at it than anyone in college football. Big sentence? Nah. Here comes the big sentence:
Recruiting scoreboards show the rosters of Alabama and Oregon beating IU’s roster in four- and five-star recruits by a combined margin of 111-7 … but the scoreboards at the Rose Bowl and Peach Bowl showed Indiana beating Alabama and Oregon by a combined 96-25.
Raises the question: What does Cignetti look at, when he looks at a recruit? Has to be more than duck feet.
Cignetti broached the topic generally, during a media availability before Indiana smacked Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl, discussing his recruiting philosophy in the broadest teams.
“When I first got the job as a recruiting coordinator and a coach for Johnny Majors, my second time around at Pitt (in 1993), we probably took too many chances on potential,” Cignetti said, then moved onto his time as recruiting coordinator for Nick Saban from 2007-10. “And then at Alabama — I think that part of it, with coach Saban — the ankle, knee, hip flexibility, position-specific criteria, toughness at all positions, what were the fatal flaws: I think that helped me a lot, too. And then you just get better at it, the more you evaluate.”
The natural follow-up was something along the lines of: What did you just say about ankles, knees and hips?
“It’s a start-stop game,” he said. “You’ve got to have those for change of direction, but you also need those to create explosive power. So, it’s a game of speed, quickness and explosive power. And you need those things to generate that.”
Here’s how that philosophy looks in real time: It’s the Peach Bowl. The Hoosiers face 3rd-and-3 at the Oregon 14, and Cignetti is sending in different personnel, including … wait, who? Is that cornerback D’Angelo Ponds running into the offensive huddle?
It is. Now Ponds is split wide right, at receiver. Before the snap he’s running in motion toward 2025 Heisman Trophy-winning IU quarterback Fernando Mendoza, then stopping like that and heading back where he came from. Mendoza throws it to the Porsche, to Ponds, whose acceleration is breathtaking. Ponds gains six yards to convert the first down, and IU scores three plays later. What Ponds had started on the first offensive play of the game — intercepting Oregon’s Dante Moore and returning it 25 yards for a 7-0 lead — is now 35-7.
“Our fastest stop-start guy,” Cignetti says of Ponds, a middling three-star prospect out of Hollywood, Florida, who has become an All-American for Cignetti.
Fernando Mendoza, like his coach, never satisfied
Mendoza is enjoying the Peach Bowl win, that 56-22 rout of Oregon. This is the postgame news conference at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Mendoza is thanking IU fans for filling 95% of the nearly 80,000-capacity NFL stadium, turning this trip to Atlanta into an IU home game.
“Shout out to Hoosier Nation for being here,” Mendoza says, then remembers how the crowd hadn’t been so helpful when IU visited Oregon three months ago. “We played in Autzen Stadium, Week 5. I believe we had five or six pre-snap penalties.”
Cignetti, listening blandly, makes a face.
“Seven,” he says.
Mendoza laughs.
“Seven,” Mendoza says, standing corrected.
Even here, sitting at 15-0, Cignetti is perturbed by what happened during that 30-20 win Oct. 11. And it’s not an act. His insistence on excellence — his pursuit of perfection — has rubbed off on his players, as Mendoza will demonstrate minutes later when the topic is his near-perfect game in the Peach Bowl: 17 for 20 for 177 yards, with more touchdown passes (five) than incompletions (three).
“Although the scoreboard doesn’t show it, there’s still a lot I have to improve on,” Mendoza said, “like footwork.”
IU has just beaten Oregon 56-22 in a CFP semifinal — the score was 42-7 before the Hoosiers pulled off the gas — and he’s critiquing his footwork?
“There was a protection check I missed,” Mendoza adds helpfully, “and there’s a ball that I want to have back.”
What makes Curt Cignetti so good?
This is one of Cignetti’s secret sauces, his exacting standards, and it hints at another: his focus, his attention to detail. In a profession of football obsessives, Cignetti is more obsessive than most. He understands the job, knows he needs to leave the office on occasion to drum up support for the program — especially in the NIL era, which requires more money than ever to fund a winner — and knows he’s in a good spot to handle that balance.
“I’m a football guy,” Cignetti says. “And I’m thankful that my athletic director, Scott Dolson, structures it so I can focus on football and not all the other stuff.”
Past IU football coaches attended — had to attend, to promote the program — every outing they could, from donor suppers to Kiwanis Club meetings. Cig pulls his weight, but Dolson understands what’s best for the coach and team will ultimately be what’s best for everyone else.
“He’ll do it — he’s great with donors, appreciates them — but I’m sensitive to protecting Cig in that way,” Dolson says. “You want him to be in demand, and he’s willing to do that, but we’re strategic with it. Everybody understands it’s best for the program if we’re not taking too much of his time away from the kids, recruiting, coaching.”
Now that we have Dolson on the phone, we have to ask him the question everyone wants to know: What makes Curt Cignetti so good? Before he can answer, we’re wondering something else. If folks are wearing out Google with that question, what’s it like to be the guy who hired Cignetti? How many times, I’m asking Dolson, do you get asked the question?
He starts laughing.
“I get asked a lot: ‘What is it about him?’” Dolson says. “It’s a super-interesting question. Because it’s not one thing. It’s multiple things.”
Like?
“Well,” Dolson says, “I think he sees things differently and processes things differently. He’s such a film person. A lot of coaches are absolutely obsessed with film, right, but he can process things so quickly and it’s amazing to me what he sees. I’ve been there and he shows me, and it blows me away. It’s the little things he notices.”
And?
“You could add a bunch of other things on top of that,” Dolson says, “including some things that probably only Cig knows. I know he works hard, unbelievably hard, and lots of coaches have that. He knows what’s most important to work hard on next — his way of prioritizing what’s the most important thing to do today. And he carries it out with his staff. Nothing is wasted with his time or resources.”
Does that answer the question for you? Nope, me neither. It’s one thing to recognize genius. Not so easy to understand it.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads , or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar , or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar . Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.