Curt Cignetti and Indiana feel the pressure like no other CFP team

The way Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti told the story was this: Several hours before his Monday morning press conference, he and Hoosiers assistants held a meeting to begin preparation for the week of games for the College Football Playoff. They had spent the previous seven days fighting and fighting, texting and searching for treasure, in what amounts to a continuous juggling act to satisfy the sport’s packed December schedule.

Not only were the Hoosiers still practicing while awaiting the recruiting spectacle that would finally reveal their fate (a first-round road game against seventh-seeded Notre Dame on Friday night), but the coaching staff simultaneously undermined the transfer portal , facilitated the recruiting visits and re-recruitment of Indiana’s own players ensured the staff was at least attentive to building its 2025 roster.

Cignetti wanted the seven-day juggling act to conclude around noon on Sunday, at which point he and his coaches could return to the normal weekly schedule that helped them achieve an 11-1 overall record and establish new one-time best programs. single season for conference wins (eight), offensive touchdowns (68) and consecutive wins (10), among others. Cignetti’s instruction was to leave all cell phones outside the meeting room, while the focus was squarely on Notre Dame. All but one of the attendees had violated the rule. Recruiting never stops in modern college football.

“It was a challenge,” Cignetti said when asked about balancing game planning and roster-building efforts. “I got home much later than normal and it was still early (4:30 a.m., 5 a.m.) because you are dealing with portal evaluations, official visits and, to some extent, still preparing the opponent. So we are dealing with your staff and also with the retention of players. I am glad that that week is behind us.

Since the transfer portal opened on Dec. 9, no team in this year’s expanded CFP is under more pressure to multitask than Indiana, a cellar-dweller in the Big Ten before Cignetti and his unflappable confidence in itself arrived last winter. To reboot a program that had more losses than any other FBS school, Cignetti overhauled the roster with 51 newcomers ahead of the 2024 season. It’s a number that included 27 transfers, 13 of which followed their James Madison head coach , where Cignetti worked from 2019-2023, and a high school recruiting class that finished No. 65 nationally in the 247Sports rankings, ranked between Boise State and Toledo, and 16th of 18 schools in the revamped Big Ten. The current roster has 18 players using an extra year of eligibility left over from the COVID-19 pandemic and 23 more players listed as redshirt juniors or seniors. The rotation from Year 1 to Year 2 under Cignetti could be seismic.

The fact that Indiana is different from every other program in this year’s CFP only adds to the urgency for Cignetti and his staff to be successful both on and off the field in December. Unlike Clemson, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State and Notre Dame, all of which can be considered blue bloods or something, the Hoosiers are not rich in history and tradition that attract high-level recruits annually. . Unlike Boise State, which represents the Mountain West, the Hoosiers do not play in a league that is as easy to win annually, clearing a more favorable path to the CFP. They also don’t have a line of oil tycoons flooding the athletic department with NIL dollars like ACC upstarts SMU. Even Arizona State, which might be the program most comparable to Indiana with several decades of prolonged mediocrity, will bring back a high-end quarterback for 2025 in starter Sam Leavitt, a luxury the Hoosiers won’t have when eligibility expires. by Kurtis Rourke after an incredible season.

“In terms of the recruiting timeline, I don’t know if there are any easy answers,” Cignetti said. “When you look at it from a player’s perspective, everyone starts school in January, so guys who change schools need to have the opportunity to visit potential schools in December. But still, seasons end at the end of November, the championship games [are] the first week of December, and there will always be bowl games, and now there are the expanded playoffs. I really don’t know the answer to that. “I don’t think it’s a simple situation, and if it were, it would already be remedied.”

[Related: 2024 College Football Playoff odds: Who will emerge from the first round?]

One of the ways Indiana sought to combat roster turnover was by signing Cignetti to a new long-term contract in mid-November, by which time he had led the Hoosiers to a 10-0 record less than a year after being hired. . The new deal locked Cignetti through the 2032 season and will pay him an average of $8 million per year, plus an additional $1 million retention bonus. And once Indiana finalized its deal with Cignetti, the athletic department began working on two-year extensions for strength and conditioning coach Derek Owings and nine of the program’s field assistants. The only member of Cignetti’s staff not expected to return is co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri, who accepted a promotion to become the full offensive coordinator at UCLA. But even Sunseri has chosen to remain with the Hoosiers through the postseason as a reflection of the strong culture Cignetti established.

Committing to Cignetti and his assistants long-term gave Indiana the best opportunity to capitalize on his magical season during the player acquisition phase of modern college football’s roster-building process, putting aside the notion that his time with the Hoosiers were little more than a stepping stone to jobs in more traditional powers. Cignetti responded by adding six transfers in a five-day span from Dec. 13-17, giving Indiana the highest-rated portal class of any team in this year’s CFP on Wednesday night, according to 247Sports, and a group that ranks 26th overall. . The next closest CFP participant is Oregon, which has added four transfers to a class that ranks 33rd overall.

The Hoosiers’ newcomers include three-star defensive tackle Hosea Wheeler of Western Kentucky, three-star cornerback Amariyun Knighten of Northern Illinois, three-star running back Lee Beebe Jr. of UAB, three-star defensive tackle Dominique Ratcliff of Texas State and a couple of specialists. Every position player has logged at least 295 snaps this season, and three of them have played at least 400 snaps each.

“I learned my mistakes at a young age and learned a lot in terms of what I was looking for. [for regarding] “The prototypical prospect that came to a four-year school and was successful,” Cignetti said during his second news conference of the week Wednesday afternoon. “What that looked like in high school, or now in the transfer portal, versus the guy who had potential but hadn’t fully developed it yet.

“So producing above potential (you’ve heard me say it a million times) worked for us.”

It worked for someone like Rourke, who threw for 7,651 yards and 50 touchdowns in five seasons at Ohio before coming to Indiana and putting together the best year of his career: 202 of 287 passing (70.4%) for 2,827 yards, 27 touchdowns and only four interceptions.

It worked for someone like running back Justice Ellison, who rushed for more than 1,700 yards over the past three seasons at Wake Forest before exploding for 811 yards and a career-high 10 touchdowns with the Hoosiers. Ellison’s backfield teammate Ty Son Lawton, who is one of Baker’s dozens of transfers from JMU, contributed 12 touchdowns and a career-high 634 rushing yards in his sixth season of college football.

It worked for almost everyone on the Hoosiers’ defense, a unit for which the top five tacklers played somewhere other than Indiana last year.

“I came here for this,” Ellison said earlier this week. “I came here to win. I came here for the playoffs. I came here to do it with guys I haven’t played a lot of football with.”

And that’s exactly the formula Cignetti and his staff would love to bottle as they prepare for Notre Dame with their sights set on 2025.

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. follow him on @Michael_Cohen13.

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