How Curt Cignetti Keeps Indiana Football from Making Champ Game 'Bigger Than It Is'

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Amid his rise from relative unknown to one of the nation’s most captivating head coaches, Curt Cignetti’s schedule hasn’t changed.

Cignetti still arrives at Indiana football’s Memorial Stadium around 5 a.m. each day. He still stays late to watch film until everybody else has left the building. It’s the foundation beneath one of college football’s sudden powerhouses, as the Hoosiers are 26–2 in Cignetti’s two seasons entering Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game.

Yet as Cignetti reaches superstardom and Indiana continues slaying dragons it never thought possible, the Hoosiers’ urgency remains higher than ever — because of Cignetti’s non-stop, never-ending desire for improvement and how he instills it within his team.

“Every single day,” senior tight end Riley Nowakowski said, “he comes in and works like he hasn’t won a game in his life.”

Cignetti, of course, has won plenty — one quick Google search tells you that. And after a 56–22 blowout victory over No. 5 Oregon in the Peach Bowl, Cignetti has more wins in his first two years at Indiana than any other coach in FBS history in their first two seasons at a school.

Indiana is college football’s last unbeaten, and it has five wins over teams ranked in the top 10 at the time of the meeting. Four of those still hold up as top 10 victories.

But it’s possible human nature has been Indiana’s biggest threat this year. The Hoosiers went from Cinderella story in 2024 to plain dominant in 2025, yet they’ve hardly stopped to revel in college football’s greatest turnaround.

Cignetti allots his team 24 hours to celebrate after wins, then it moves onto the next week of preparation. The formula led to Indiana’s first undefeated regular season in program history, and it stood the test of the College Football Playoff en route to the program’s first national title appearance.

“I think that's why we keep moving forward,” senior linebacker Aiden Fisher said. “We're not satisfied with anything. We just want to earn more opportunities to play with each other, earn more opportunities to prove ourself as a team, as an individual. And that's how you be successful.”

If No. 1 Indiana (15–0) knocks off No. 10 Miami (13–2) in the title game Jan. 19, it will be the first team to go 16–0 since Yale in 1894 and the 65th team since 1936 to finish unbeaten and win the championship.

But the Hoosiers pay no mind to history, Fisher said, because it won’t mean anything unless they beat Miami. They’re focused on fixing mistakes from their 34-point win over Oregon and preparing for the Hurricanes, who haven’t lost since Nov. 1.

No complacency. No satisfaction. No time to let one’s mind wander to any postgame celebration Monday night in Miami. And certainly no attention given to Indiana’s status as a touchdown favorite.

“Every single time he talks to us, he's going to hammer on the point that nothing we got before is going to earn us anything in the future,” Nowakowski said. “Every single game has to be approached the exact same way.

“I think just having that hammered into your head every single time you see him and hear him talk, eventually it gets the message across. When that’s all you hear, that's kind of all you think about.”

Indiana has taken drastic measures to ensure it hears nothing else.

While he was in the Hoosiers’ training room, Nowakowski saw ESPN pundits discussing the national championship game. He went over to the monitor and turned it off.

“We don't need to hear this,” Nowakowski said. “We try to eliminate all that, whether it's good or bad. We don't need to hear the talk about us. You don't need to be going on social media, searching up your name or checking out what they have to say. It's probably a little better stuff now than maybe at the beginning of the season. People may have a little more belief.

“But either way, good or bad, it doesn't help us out much. Everybody can say whatever they want about us. It's not going to help us win a game. We have to tune that stuff out, and I think the whole team is in on that.”

Senior receiver Elijah Sarratt said he deletes X, formerly known as Twitter, each week because he tries to embrace Cignetti’s daily reminders about not paying attention to outside noise. It’s a process, Sarratt said, of listening to Cignetti’s message, believing in it and asserting it to himself.

Cignetti offered additional advice in a team meeting Monday afternoon, one week before kickoff, centered around preparing for Miami in the same manner Indiana prepared for Ohio State, Alabama and the rest of its opponents.

“The biggest mistake our guys can make … is making this game bigger than it is and going down that road,” Cignetti said. “Then, that would be detrimental to our preparation and our performance. This week is no different than any other week.

“We have to be on point. We have to stack meetings, practices and go in totally prepared. But then you've got to put on it the field against a great opponent.”

Indiana has continually elevated the standard for the biggest game in program history over the past month-and-a-half, and the Hoosiers have grown accustomed to turning bright-lights, big-stage environments into the nation’s most impressive theatrical performances.

Sarratt acknowledged he’s experienced surreal feelings in anticipation of the Hoosiers’ bowl games. He remembers watching the Rose Bowl, Peach Bowl and national title game on television when he was younger, and his battle with reminiscing is only compounded by the realization he’s readying for his final college game.

Indiana grasps the stakes of Monday night’s game — the program’s first national championship, the completion of perhaps the greatest fairytale in the history of sports, inarguable immortality in college football history — but the Hoosiers, led by Cignetti’s microscopic, improvement-based mindset, will prepare the same way they did for the season-opener vs. Old Dominion.

“There's going to be a lot of talk on social media about how big the game is, how big the moment is,” Sarratt said. “We're treating it like any other game. That's what you have to do. You don't want to make the moment bigger than it is.

“We understand it's the national championship and a lot of people are going to be watching, but we're going to treat this practice week the same. Go in, work every single day leading up to that game.”

Fisher views it as a two-sided coin.

He told Indiana’s linebackers Monday afternoon the team has a rare opportunity and needs to commit itself for a thorough, fully focused week of preparation so it leaves the field at Hard Rock Stadium with no regrets. But also, the parameters of the field won’t change. Neither will the time or equipment. Ultimately, Fisher said, it’s just football.

Indiana center Pat Coogan, who played in the national championship game last season with Notre Dame, hasn’t tried to reinvent the wheel with specific wisdom. Coogan’s message to his teammates has focused on being where their feet are, maximizing each day and each practice and translating lessons from the meeting rooms to the field.

It’s the same mantra Coogan delivered at the start of the Hoosiers’ College Football Playoff run, one that’s proven effective and prevented the moment from becoming too big for the Cream and Crimson.

“At the end of the day, it's another football game, right?” Coogan said. “The stage is big. The stage has been big the past couple of weeks. The game is between the white lines. I think we have done a good job of having that headspace and having that mindset, never making it bigger than it is.

“And really just making sure we're putting in the work and putting in the prep, so when we get to game day, we put our best foot forward.”

Traces of Cignetti’s influence are prevalent within the minds, and mentality, of Indiana’s players. The Hoosiers have embraced the approach of their 64-year-old coach, whose greatest superpower may be the pulse he has on his team and how to center his players no matter the stakes of the game.

Cignetti has long preached the need to eliminate warm-fuzzies and rat poison, a term he learned as an assistant under Nick Saban from 2007–10 at Alabama.

Indiana knows outside noise has no ability to impact its performance. Coogan said the noise won’t help the Hoosiers score any touchdowns or convert any third downs. It’s merely noise, clutter and distractions — and the Hoosiers, aided by Cignetti’s steadfast desire to eradicate all of it, have proven proficient at handling the chaos swirling outside them.

“We have a very veteran group and a mature group, and certainly Coach Cig instills that mindset of eliminate all noise and clutter,” Coogan said. “We really do. We try our best to. We're humans as well, so sometimes it gets difficult. But I believe we have done a great job of doing so and we need to continue to do so.”

There is no bigger stage in college football than the one Indiana will climb aboard Monday night in Miami. The lights don’t get brighter. The stakes don’t get higher. Neither does the attention, the viewership or the discourse.

But Cignetti has no plans to let his team believe any of it. He’s still waking up early, staying late and inspiring his team by attacking the week as if he’s never won anything — even while on the verge of winning everything.