The Indiana Hoosiers are national champs… in football!
(photo credit: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
They were so bad for so long. Historically bad.
Before November, Indiana had the most losses in college football history. Across 125 seasons before Curt Cignetti was hired in December 2023, none of its 23 coaches left the program with a winning conference record. Only twice had the Hoosiers claimed at least a share of the Big Ten title, most recently a three-way tie in 1967. Generations of administrative dysfunction, low football revenue, poor recruiting and a department premium on basketball turned Indiana football into a wasteland.
From this article on The Athletic
They changed the coach. And the coach changed the culture. He came across as overly cocky in his introductory press conference:
But, as the saying goes, “it ain’t bragging if you can back it up.” And “Coach Cig” did just that.
(BTW, he admitted later that some of his braggadocio was just trying to wake up the fanbase, and the team. See this clip for more.)
Our youngest goes to IU, so he’s thrilled, and our whole family is fully on board the bandwagon.
“Let me tell ya: We won the national championship at Indiana University. It can be done.”
But to me, the best part of the Cinderella story is that it’s not really a Cinderella story. It’s about how a leader can change the culture of an organization. That takes a lot of hard work.
“You’re rebuilding the house, so to speak, and you start with the foundation and build it up,” Cignetti said. “It’s more process oriented. It’s standards, expectations, consistency, performance and accountability.”
And yes, it also requires a leader who is so strong in his beliefs that others are willing to follow, despite evidence to the contrary.
“It starts with belief. Sometimes the belief has to be a little irrational, right?” said guard Pat Coogan, the Rose Bowl MVP who transferred from Notre Dame to Indiana this season.
“I love to tell you, two years ago, I thought this was going to happen. I’d be lying,” linebacker Aiden Fisher said. “Coach Cig 100 percent believed it, and this is just unbelievable.”
Standards. Expectations. Consistency. Performance. Accountability. And belief. You may not win a national championship with those attributes. But you’ll win at life.
“I think we sent a message, first of all, to society that if you keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard and you’ve got the right people, anything’s possible,” Cignetti said.
You done said…