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BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA - APRIL 23: Head coach Curt Cignetti of the Indiana Hoosiers looks on during the 2026 Indiana Spring Football Game at Memorial Stadium on April 23, 2026 in Bloomington, Indiana. (Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images for ONIT)

The Indiana Hoosiers might have the best head coach in college football. Curt Cignetti has done the best turnaround job in recent memory. He has taken the Hoosiers from being cellar dwellers to the defending national champions in just two seasons.

Cignetti spent most of his coaching career coaching some bad teams. It wasn’t until he’d been coaching for multiple decades that he got a call from a Power 4 school. The year before he took the job with the Hoosiers, he had led James Madison to an 11-1 season.

In a recent interview, Cignetti reveals that he almost didn’t take the Indiana job.

The Indiana Hoosiers Almost Didn’t Land Curt Cignetti

According to an interview that he had with Stewart Mandel of The Athletic, Cignetti admitted that he was having second thoughts about taking the job. In fact, he wanted to stay at JMU.

“Cignetti wasn’t certain he’d take the Indiana job if offered. It was, after all, a traditional doormat, albeit one with a whole lot of Big Ten TV money. Around 10 p.m. on a late November night in Harrisonburg, Va., as he sat in bed with Manette, he told her he was leaning toward staying at JMU,” Mandel wrote.

Then, Cignetti got a call from Indiana Scott Dolson, and he ended up taking the job.

“And then Scott called, like, five minutes later, and he said, ‘Congratulations, you’re the new head coach of Indiana, man, and we’re going to kick some butt,” Cignetti recalled. “And I said, ‘hell mother f—cking right we are,’” Mandel wrote.

It’s clear that Cignetti made the right decision to take the job. Last season, he was able to lead the Hoosiers to a 16-0 season and a national title. He now might be considered the best head coach in the country with what he has done in each of the last two seasons.

Indiana Will Have a Tough Road to Repeating as Champions

As good as Cignetti is as a head coach, it will be very hard for Indiana to repeat as national champions. They lose a lot of talent on the defensive end of the ball. Losing Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza also makes things tougher.

The Hoosiers feel good about new quarterback Josh Hoover, and Cignetti made it very clear they trust him this season. Yet, their schedule this season is going to be a lot harder than it has been in the last couple of seasons, when they made the College Football Playoff.

IU has to take on Nebraska, Ohio State, and Michigan in consecutive weeks. Beating all three teams in a row is not going to be an easy task. IU likely just has to win two of those games in order to make it back to the CFP, though. Yet, they are going to be every team’s hardest game.