How did Indiana get to where Iowa wants to be

[nilekinnick]

What Indiana has done is amazing to me, I did not think it was possible for a non power to do what they have done.

Coaching - I have total respect for Ferentz & staff, most all players love him, develop under program, many end up in NFL as 2 ,3, 4 stars.

Coaching philosophy - win line of scrimmage, run the ball, limit penalties, strong D, emphasis on special teams. I believe similar between

Talent recruiting - Cignetti brought the players from JMU but I would not have thought those players would put them above Iowa in terms of skill

transfer portal & NIL - I wish schools had to post NIL, I dont know what Cuban or others provided. I dont know what Fernando got to play for them. I would have to say Indiana has done a better job here than Iowa. Glad to see Iowa more active this off season

Iowa was so close in 2025, unfortunately took Gronk a few games to find his groove, getting injured in Indiana game, and just a few plays here and there from having their year
early turnovers
hike over punters head
not stopping Ducks last 2 min
Wetjens toe out of bounds at USC

Both Iowa & Indy have alot of key pieces to replace his year, Similair schedules this year Mich, OSU, Wash. Indy also gets USC at home so maybe slightly in our favor.

 

[Fryowa]

Cignetti has no equal in the history of college football until proven otherwise.

It may or may not last, but it's been a big enough sample size now to say there's never been another one like him and it hasn't been disproven yet. What Cignetti has done is not lighting in a bottle at this point.

The guy has an elite-tier recruiting eye, complete buy-in from players, staff, and administration, unreal talent for coaching and building his staff, studied under Saban at Bama, and has gigantic cajones. He doesn't get rattled at all in big moments and I'll also argue to the death that he's on the spectrum just enough to make things work even if it's weird.

Couple that with NIL and Mark Cuban backing you, and you get what Indiana has.

In no way is any of that attainable at Iowa because none of those pieces currently exist anywhere else, nor is there a chance that those pieces would end up here at the same time.

 

[NorthKCHawk]

This is easy to answer: Luck.

Everyone wants to make the greatest hire ever. Coaches get elevated from the lower ranks all the time after winning titles. There was nothing mystical or magical about what Indiana did. It was a good hire, but no one was expecting this or lauding the hire as the greatest decision in the history of sports. Lightening in a bottle.....

Any AD setting the standard of success measured by finding the next Coach Cig is pissing into the wind.

 

[kameltoez102]

This is easy to answer: Luck.

Everyone wants to make the greatest hire ever. Coaches get elevated from the lower ranks all the time after winning titles. There was nothing mystical or magical about what Indiana did. It was a good hire, but no one was expecting this or lauding the hire as the greatest decision in the history of sports. Lightening in a bottle.....

Any AD setting the standard of success measured by finding the next Coach Cig is pissing into the wind.

There is no way it was luck. He has two losses, made the playoffs in both seasons and won a natty in the hardest period of time to ever have to win one. His team had a really difficult schedule last season and won out. You used to be able to win a natty in 12 games he just did it in 16 games. As Fry said the guy is a total anomaly. From how he recruits to how he runs his program no one does it like him. The copycats are going to come out of the woodwork now to try and duplicate his success but I am not sure it is possible

 

[Hawkboys]

Best Xs and Os coach along with silly NIL. IA won't ever have either, altho Kirk might be best development coach. But those guys don't get NIL the same way Xs and Os coaches do.

 

[guffus]

Indiana caught lightning in a bottle. It would be unlikely it will it ever be duplicated.

The only ones who came close was Bill Snyder at Kansas St and Gary Barnett at NW. But that was a different era before NIL and the portal.

But if you are you looking for the next Cignetti, there was nothing on his resume that stood out before Indy. Sure, he was a FCS/G5 hot shot at JMU, but there are 3 or 4 of those guys every year, and most of them fizzled out at the BCS/P5 level. Urban Meyer is a great exception but that's just proof its very hit and miss.

 

[Fryowa]

This is easy to answer: Luck.

Everyone wants to make the greatest hire ever. Coaches get elevated from the lower ranks all the time after winning titles. There was nothing mystical or magical about what Indiana did. It was a good hire, but no one was expecting this or lauding the hire as the greatest decision in the history of sports. Lightening in a bottle.....

Any AD setting the standard of success measured by finding the next Coach Cig is pissing into the wind.

If you mean by luck strictly in hiring Cignetti, I'll buy that.

If you mean going from Tom Allen and the historically worst team in P5 football to undefeated national champions in two years, no way. You don't run the table in the Big Ten and end the season winning 4 in a row against 4 top 10 teams by luck. You have to make the right recruiting decisions, the right staffing decisions, call the right games 16 times in a row, have the donor base aligned and willing to pay...There are 138 FBS level programs, and if we arbitrarily go back 50 years that's roughly 7,000 football team seasons where nothing like this has come even remotely close to happening.

Did Indiana get lucky by hiring Cignetti? Absolutely.

Is what Cignetti did and what the donor base allowed him to do luck? Holy shit no...

 

[BuiltLikeWilt]

Pure and simple .. good coach + NIL + transfer portal New era of college football It wouldn't have been possible without those 3 things. They are fairly new (portal and NIL) and this is how it comes together now. If he had to build from straight recruiting and development it wouldn't have happened this quickly. But this is the world we live in now .

 

[dagdaj]

This is easy to answer: Luck.

Everyone wants to make the greatest hire ever. Coaches get elevated from the lower ranks all the time after winning titles. There was nothing mystical or magical about what Indiana did. It was a good hire, but no one was expecting this or lauding the hire as the greatest decision in the history of sports. Lightening in a bottle.....

Any AD setting the standard of success measured by finding the next Coach Cig is pissing into the wind.

100%
Yes, you have to make your own luck. And, more importantly, capitalize on it when you have it (like when you're opponent's miss a field goal and their starting QB goes down late in a 3 point game). And Cignetti should get all the credit. Bucketloads of it.
But even then, I'm gonna need to see repeatability to assume that luck didn't play a huge role.

Now, if he does it again next year, and the year after that. And delivers top 10 appearances at a rate on par with OSU? Then, pretty hard to argue he's not the G.O.A.T. and has some knowledge, algorithm, process or mix of gut feelings that nobody has ever possessed in college football before.

But, even OSU slips out of the top 10 not all that infrequently. We've seen a few teams repeat championships. A few more make repeat appearances. But it doesn't take them long to have a meh season.

Sure, some can rebound. And Indiana will no doubt give Cignetti all the opportunity to rebound. Just as Ferentz has been given opportunity. No telling how much someone might be willing to pay Cignetti if he can keep things up for another couple seasons. And what his number might be to be flipped. And what happens after that.

I'm just playing the numbers, stats, and common sense here. I fail to believe he has some secret sauce that someone else with MORE resources hasn't had before. And if he does have some secret sauce, others are going to be able to identify it and replicate it. Or hire away the other people who contribute to it.

To Fry's point about worst to first.
He might be the greatest at going worst to first. Strike that. He's inarguably the best at going from worst to first. No might be about it. But I'll argue that's also quite a bit different than staying at the top. That can change the way you think and is a different process altogether. A whole lot of added pressure too and that may come from the people who bring the money.

 

[NorthKCHawk]

The premise of the

If you mean by luck strictly in hiring Cignetti, I'll buy that.

If you mean going from Tom Allen and the historically worst team in P5 football to undefeated national champions in two years, no way. You don't run the table in the Big Ten and end the season winning 4 in a row against 4 top 10 teams by luck. You have to make the right recruiting decisions, the right staffing decisions, call the right games 16 times in a row, have the donor base aligned and willing to pay...There are 138 FBS level programs, and if we arbitrarily go back 50 years that's roughly 7,000 football team seasons where nothing like this has come even remotely close to happening.

Did Indiana get lucky by hiring Cignetti? Absolutely.

Is what Cignetti did and what the donor base allowed him to do luck? Holy shit no..

The premise of the OT was basically asking why Iowa didn't do this instead of Indiana. The reality is that no one at Indiana knew Cig would do what he did. Not even close. My son was at Indiana when Cig was hired and while people were excited, most people were like "who the hell is this guy?"

They took a shot at a guy with absolutely no experience at the Power 5 level, but high success at lower levels. Schools do that every year. Hell, we just did did that in MBB. Most of the time it doesn't work. Sometimes it does. It has NEVER worked like this. Not even close.

What Cig did was a product of his talent and greatness as a coach. What Indiana did in hiring Cig and getting a Nattie in 2 years is BLIND ASS LUCK. They in no way knew Cig was a generational coach. They got lucky beyond all hope and belief.

 

[Fryowa]

The premise of the

The premise of the OT was basically asking why Iowa didn't do this instead of Indiana. The reality is that no one at Indiana knew Cig would do what he did. Not even close. My son was at Indiana when Cig was hired and while people were excited, most people were like "who the hell is this guy?"

They took a shot at a guy with absolutely no experience at the Power 5 level, but high success at lower levels. Schools do that every year. Hell, we just did did that in MBB. Most of the time it doesn't work. Sometimes it does. It has NEVER worked like this. Not even close.

What Cig did was a product of his talent and greatness as a coach. What Indiana did in hiring Cig and getting a Nattie in 2 years is BLIND ASS LUCK. They in no way knew Cig was a generational coach. They got lucky beyond all hope and belief.

We’re on the same page. The hiring was pure luck, what Cignetti did after that was not.

 

[hawkdrummer1]

The premise of the

The premise of the OT was basically asking why Iowa didn't do this instead of Indiana. The reality is that no one at Indiana knew Cig would do what he did. Not even close. My son was at Indiana when Cig was hired and while people were excited, most people were like "who the hell is this guy?"

They took a shot at a guy with absolutely no experience at the Power 5 level, but high success at lower levels. Schools do that every year. Hell, we just did did that in MBB. Most of the time it doesn't work. Sometimes it does. It has NEVER worked like this. Not even close.

What Cig did was a product of his talent and greatness as a coach. What Indiana did in hiring Cig and getting a Nattie in 2 years is BLIND ASS LUCK. They in no way knew Cig was a generational coach. They got lucky beyond all hope and belief.

Not exactly. He was never a HC, but if you look at his background it's similar to a handfull of other P5 coaches. He was an asst under Nick Saban at Alabama.
Every HC in this years final four teams worked under Saban at some point. That's not a coincidence.

 

[NorthKCHawk]

Not exactly. He was never a HC, but if you look at his background it's similar to a handfull of other P5 coaches. He was an asst under Nick Saban at Alabama.
Every HC in this years final four teams worked under Saban at some point. That's not a coincidence.

None of that changes the luck factor here. Unless you are suggesting that Cig's overall resume was so stacked and different than every other candidate for every other HC job in NCAA football ever, and that it was blatantly obvious he was the next coming of Christ on a football field, then I maintain what Indiana did here was blind ass luck. Guys with MUCH MUCH stronger resumes than Cig have been hired many many times and never won a Nattie, let alone in year two of a tire fire football school.

Scott Frost's resume when Nebbie hired him was arguably stronger. OC at the best offensive school in the nation. Went to a Group of 5 and went undefeated in his second year. Then hired by a school that has one of the winningest records in college football (albeit dusty by then) and he had 5 losing seasons.

Ben McCollum has a similar level of unheard of success at the DII level and Drake. Anyone expecting a Nattie next year at Iowa?

The list of coaches hired with similar, as good, or better resumes as Cig is practically endless. No one else stepped into a historically terrible program and made the playoffs in year 1 and nattie in year two. Indiana did nothing but make a good hire AND be the recipient of the shiniest golden ticket in the history of modern sports. Indiana is not genius athletic department or the Nastrodamus of the college sporting world, they are LUCKY.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Simple enough answer. Took a flier on a coach who has proven himself to turn programs fast at every place he has been.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

This is easy to answer: Luck.

Everyone wants to make the greatest hire ever. Coaches get elevated from the lower ranks all the time after winning titles. There was nothing mystical or magical about what Indiana did. It was a good hire, but no one was expecting this or lauding the hire as the greatest decision in the history of sports. Lightening in a bottle.....

Any AD setting the standard of success measured by finding the next Coach Cig is pissing into the wind.

Yup. It's a cosmic fluke for that to have happened. Hoping or even worse expecting that Iowa or any other similar program can replicate it is laughable. There's fans out there that do though not just Iowas but I'm sure Wisconsin/Neb and plenty others think they outta be able to push the NIL button and make the magic happen.

Indiana will have a good chance to keep it going some because they've got serious NIL $ backing them now. Just look at how much of a raise they've given Cignetti already. Even that'll be a tough hill to climb just due to all the competition out there but I don't expect Indiana to fall off and be a below top 15 team for quite awhile. Unless they really swing and miss on the QB position that'd be main thing. It can't be understated how good Mendoza was. Perfect fit for what they wanted to do and their was no Qb more clutch then him late in close games.

 

[SCHawkeye2]

5 years ago Hoosier fans were asking how Iowa got to be where Indiana wanted to be.

 

[NorthKCHawk]

I was thinking about this a bit more and I do think that NIL in general has lifted up the non-flashy, nose to grind stone, blue collar coaches in ways I did not anticipate. Cheaters and showmen like Saban and Dabo and Harbaugh have given way a bit to guys like Cig because the cheating blue bloods cannot stockpile all the talent in the NIL era. Just most of it.

Remember about 15 years ago there were rumors that Michigan was going to take a run at KF? I remember discussing that if KF could start with 4 and 5 star kids, instead of 2 and 3 star kids, and develop from there, he could push for championships.

Since NIL has hit, Iowa has slightly raised the caliber of kids it is bringing in. Not in a huge way, but there is better quality talent coming in the door, and KF continues to put a very good product on the field.

Cig did that on steroids this last year. Her parlayed his first great season with a relatively soft schedule into bringing in even better talent and coaching them up for a nattie. Success begets success, and inthis case, that means begets cash.

In the end, the money blue bloods are going to get the 5 star parade. But, with NIL, I feel like the second tier schools like Iowa have separated from the next tier down like the Clowns and Purdue, and are able to get blue blood cast offs and quality kids who don't want to sit for 3 years.

 

[ChosenChildren]

Cignetti has no equal in the history of college football until proven otherwise.

It may or may not last, but it's been a big enough sample size now to say there's never been another one like him and it hasn't been disproven yet. What Cignetti has done is not lighting in a bottle at this point.

The guy has an elite-tier recruiting eye, complete buy-in from players, staff, and administration, unreal talent for coaching and building his staff, studied under Saban at Bama, and has gigantic cajones. He doesn't get rattled at all in big moments and I'll also argue to the death that he's on the spectrum just enough to make things work even if it's weird.

Couple that with NIL and Mark Cuban backing you, and you get what Indiana has.

In no way is any of that attainable at Iowa because none of those pieces currently exist anywhere else, nor is there a chance that those pieces would end up here at the same time.

I think the difference is the "cajones" factor. I believe late in the game against Miami he went for it, and made it, on a 4th and 3 in the 4th quarter. Most coaches, including Kirk, would have kicked the FG. Indiana went on to score a TD, which effectively won the game.

He calculates risk and takes risk better than any coach in football right now. It's not luck

 

[Hawkfnntn]

I think the difference is the "cajones" factor. I believe late in the game against Miami he went for it, and made it, on a 4th and 3 in the 4th quarter. Most coaches, including Kirk, would have kicked the FG. Indiana went on to score a TD, which effectively won the game.

He calculates risk and takes risk better than any coach in football right now. It's not luck

There's always some luck involved.... He didn't have any control over Brown not completing that screen pass. It's never all one thing necessarily. But he's certainly shown to be on the aggressive side of decision making and often times that helps you make your own luck. When it works you're a genius and when it doesn't it fails spectacularly.

When it comes to Cig and KF they are on opposite sides of the specter for when it comes to risk tolerance. That's for sure. One of the things that makes football fun is that there's more then one way to achieve the same ultimate goal. Is one way more 'right' than the other? I'm sure there's stats that'd back up whichever way it is. I just know fans enjoy the aggressive way more for the most part

 

[BigD]

To answer your question on the thread title;

To start you have to be willing to fire a coach that has given a massive sample size due in past history that shows he will never have the coaching ability or recruiting ability to achieve what Indiana’s new coach has done.

The fan’s need to quit be bleeding hearts supporters of a current 22 year run that proves the statement up above this comment.

Last Big Ten title was 2004, that 22 years ago and that was a tie and not a clear singular title. Are you kidding me?

No university in college football would ever wait that long, unless they and the fans have throw in the towel and excepted less than EVER accomplishing
greatness. Longevity does not prove greatness. It only acknowledges willingness to accept being good but not ever being the best at least once.

As one poster pointed out in another thread, he also has the most losses in conference history. I am not sure that is true, but if it is that is an irony in and of itself of what longevity a creates.

Don’t be mad at me……… you asked the damn question.