'Big Bob Knight Fan' Curt Cignetti Can Give Indiana Another Undefeated Champion

With a win Monday over Miami, Indiana University would have the two most recent undefeated national champions in football and basketball. Curt Cignetti spoke Sunday about his appreciation for Bob Knight growing up.

Indiana Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti during a press conference ahead of the College Football Playoff National Championship in Miami. | Grace Hollars/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

A banner hangs in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall and reads "NCAA's #1 All-Time March Madness Team," honoring coach Bob Knight's 1975-76 Hoosiers as the last undefeated national champions in men's college basketball.

Soon, Indiana may need to install a similar banner across the street at Memorial Stadium.

Because 50 years later, coach Curt Cignetti's No. 1-ranked Indiana football team has a chance to be crowned undefeated national champions as they play No. 10 Miami Monday at 7:30 p.m. ET at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.

Indiana University could make a claim no one else can if Cignetti's Hoosiers pull it off/ It’d have the two most recent undefeated national champions in the two biggest sports –– football and men's basketball. And fittingly, the coach who's brought the football program to historic heights grew up admiring Knight, who solidified the basketball program as a blue blood with three national championships.

"I was a big Bob Knight fan as a little kid," Cignetti said Sunday in Miami."I liked sort of the shenanigans and the faces at the press conferences and throwing the chair across the court. I thought that was pretty cool. And the guy I bought my house from was a big friend of Bob Knight, actually.”

While the 1975-76 basketball team's 32-0 record has stood for 50 years, undefeated champions are much more common on the football field. Michigan did so in 2023, as did 2022 Georgia, 2019 LSU and 2018 Clemson in recent history.

That doesn't mean Indiana's run is any less impressive or unique. Because it’s only the second year of the expanded 12-team playoff, the Hoosiers would be the first team in FBS history to go 16-0 and first team in college football history to do so since the 1894 Yale Bulldogs.

Being such dominant force in the CFP has put Indiana in the conversation among some of the sport’s greatest all-time teams, too. They’re well-balanced on both sides of the ball, rarely make mistakes and have All-Big Ten and All-Americans at every level.

Along with 30-plus point wins over No. 5 Oregon and No. 9 Alabama in the CFP, the Hoosiers defeated then-No. 1 Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship and picked up regular season road wins against Penn State, Iowa and Oregon. 

A loss on Monday wouldn’t wipe away all the amazing memories and program-firsts this team achieved, or the momentum they built for future seasons under Cignetti. But at the same time, they must finish the job Monday to officially join the all-time greats. 

Cignetti appreciates what an undefeated national championship would represent at Indiana, which has the last men’s basketball team to do so. But like he’s preached since taking over in 2024, now it’s time to block out the noise and play football.

"It really has no effect on what's going to take place here at 7:50 tomorrow night. But it was 50 years ago, and if we're able to climb that mountain, it'll be a unique coincidence. But it really has no effect on what's going to take place here at 7:50 tomorrow night."

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