Is Earth Really Flat? Indiana Is Ranked No. 2 In College Football Playoff, And It Gets Stranger

The following is even too outrageous for the combination of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Humpty Dumpty and the Twilight Zone.

For one, the College Football Playoff selecton committee said this week with its first ranking of the year that only Ohio State is better than Indiana heading into the stretrch drive of the season.

Wait. Indiana?

Ranked No. 2 in college football?

Yeah, we’re still close to Halloween, but this isn’t a trick. There’s actually more to this treat out of nowhere for Hoosiers fans.

As legendary Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight is somewhere screaming from The Great Beyond – you know, while tossing a chair across a cloud – the current football coach for the Hoosiers makes more than twice as much money per season as the current basketball coach.

That’s $11.6 million for Curt Cignetti compared to $4.5 million for Darian DeVries, and get this: While DeVries is nevertheless the fourth-highest-paid coach in the Big Ten, Cignetti is the third-highest-paid coach, but not in the conference.

We’re talking about in college football behind Kirby Smart ($13.2 million) and Ryan Day ($12.5) of perennial powers Georgia and Ohio State respectively.

Cignetti deserves every penny.

Until the last two seasons, Indiana was a perennial nothing.

I covered Indiana football and basketball for The Cincinnati Enquirer during the late 1970s, when the Hoosiers hadn’t managed a winning season in more than a decade before they reached the Holiday Bowl in 1979 under future ESPN star Lee Corso for only their second bowl game ever, which led to their first bowl victory ever.

Afterward, Indiana football returned each year to fluctuating between mediocre and brutal before the sport of the Hoosiers’ heart came along.

That was Bobby Knight and hoops.

Except for Notre Dame football at the northern tip of the state in South Bend, Indiana, where I was born and raised, the sporting life always has been about basketball throughout Indiana, especially to the south around Bloomington, where football was just a necessary evil before the dribbling began.

So this really is shocking stuff.

In the 127-year history of Indiana football before Cignetti, the Hoosiers had never won 10 games in a season.

Indiana’s football team spent its first year under Cignetti in 2024 going from a 9-27 record during the three previous seasons under Tom Allen to 11-2 after losing in the first round of the College Football Playoff.

The point is, the Hoosiers – yes, the Hoosiers – reached the College Football Playoff last season, and they’re sprinting that way again.

They have a 9-0 record.

They have Cignetti moving through a second consecutive season as the primary candidate for “coach of the year’” honors for everybody giving that award.

They have a Heisman Trophy contender at quarterback in Fernando Mendoza who ranks 42nd among college athletes in NIL (name, image and likeness) money at $1.6 million.

They also have the nation’s seventh-best defense in yards allowed per game.

There’s more to this Indiana football story of facts becoming stranger than fiction, starting with this: Not only do folks around Bloomington go to Memorial Stadium these days during the season, but they pack the place. The years I covered Indiana football during the late 1970s resembled the ones before and after for the Hoosiers, when emptiness and yawning dominated the stands.

Back then, it was routine for Indiana University officials to snap photos featuring the inside of the Memorial Stadium only when Ohio State was in town. That was because the traditionally elite Buckeyes traveled well, and since their fans wore red like Indiana fans, the photos of that game always made it appear the place was filled with loyal supporters of the home team.

Let’s return to the present, where Merchants Bank bosses were so impressed by the explosion of Indiana fans during the last couple of years that they combined with university officials in August for a naming rights deal. In exchange for what is now officially “Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium,” the university will get $50 million over 20 years from the financial institution.

Such things happen when you’re the Hoosiers, and you’re guaranteed a sellout for your last home game this season on November 15 against Wisconsin. As a result, they will do the unprecedented (which is the understatement of two centuries for Indiana) by selling out their last four home games for the second consecutive year.

It all goes back to Cignetti, 64, and along with his brilliant Xs and Os, he owns brashness in the vicinity of, oh, say the late Bobby Knight.

First, consider this: The year before Cignetti joined Indiana, he performed a miracle at James Madison. During that last season of his five with the Dukes, he became the first coach in history to lead a squad into the Top 25 during its first year of transition from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the big boys of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).

There also were Cignetti’s opening four years as a head coach in college football when he led Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania to a 53-17 record through the 2016 season. After that, he jumped to Division I Elon for two years before he took over James Madison in 2019.

A desperate Indiana called afterward.

Cignetti delivered his first address to the Hoosier Nation in December of 2023 at an Indiana basketball game on campus against Maryland. He grabbed the microphone on the floor, and then he sounded, well, like Bobby Knight, the explosive Hoosiers coach who won three national championships while blistering the ears of players, referees, reporters and others along the way.

“I don’t take a backseat to anybody and don’t plan on starting now,” Cignetti said to the packed house at Assembly Hall, roaring in the background, before the roof nearly exploded when he mentioned Indiana’s hated rival.

“Purdue sucks!”

Then Cignetti added, “But so does Michigan and Ohio State!”

After Cignetti finished his introductory speech as vintage Bobby Knight, he did something better for the Hoosier Nation during his first Indiana season.

He combined his aggressive thoughts with his football wizardry and his brilliant use of the transfer portal, and he won like vintage Bobby Knight.

He hasn’t stopped.