'Sleeping Giant' No More: Cignetti Brought AD Dolson's Indiana Football Dream to Fruition

EUGENE, Ore. — The smile never left Scott Dolson's face. Not when he posed for pictures. Not when he high-fived fans in cream and crimson who'd entered the playing surface. And certainly not when he was face-to-face with and chest bumping a jubilant Elijah Sarratt at midfield.

For Indiana's athletic director, it was a defining moment — perhaps the most indicative yet — that his vision for Hoosier football had been realized.

The day after the Hoosiers hired Curt Cignetti in November of 2023, Dolson called Indiana's football program a "sleeping giant." The beast awakened in 2024, when the Hoosiers won 11 games and went to the College Football Playoff.

But on Saturday, against Mighty Oregon, Indiana slayed its first dragon of Cignetti's tenure — and officially became a giant.

The No. 7 Hoosiers (6-0, 3-0 Big Ten) stomped the No. 3 Ducks, 30-20, on Saturday at Autzen Stadium in Eugene.

"It's great to see this come to fruition," Dolson told Indiana Hoosiers on SI after the game. "And now, we'll just keep working and double down. Never get complacent, right?"

Complacency requires Indiana to care what others think. The Hoosiers hear noise, but they no longer process it. They see rankings next to opponents' names and don't flinch. To them, it's just the next game on the schedule.

But this one mattered more. Once the final seconds ticked off the clock, the Hoosiers' entire roster sprinted to the Southwest corner of Autzen Stadium to embrace the fans who made the trip to Eugene. The walk toward their locker room behind the East tunnel served only as an extension of their celebration, not the end of it.

Even as Cignetti handled his postgame press conference well over half an hour after the game ended, there were still yells, hoots, hollers and embraces fit for an evening where Indiana left the shackles of its past behind.

"It shows the country that the IU football team, it's a real team," quarterback Fernando Mendoza said postgame. "We're not just a one-hit wonder."

The Hoosiers were 16-2 under Cignetti's guidance entering Saturday. Their two losses were to the only two top 10 teams they played on the road last season in Notre Dame and Ohio State. They were savagely reminded of the difference between great and elite.

For as many boxes as Indiana checked in its historic 2024 season, beating elite teams wasn't one of them. Sarratt said the Hoosiers needed the experience of walking through the fire to better know how to extinguish it.

Indiana gained big-game experience, and it added difference-making players like running back Roman Hemby, who scored two rushing touchdowns, and outside linebacker Kellan Wyatt, who had one-and-a-half sacks Saturday night.

The Hoosiers also learned mindset, which Cignetti said postgame was not only his biggest emphasis, but also his biggest question entering the day. He wanted to see if Indiana believed, expected and was prepared to make it happen. He wanted the Hoosiers to prove they could handle adversity without flinching or showing frustration and anxiety.

"That was the only thing you don't know until you play the game," Cignetti said. "We passed that test."

Sarratt never had a doubt.

"From the beginning of the week, I was telling these guys, 'Man, we're going to go do this,'" Sarratt said. "Like, you have to have that confidence that you're going to go in and win those games, and every single day, everybody had the confidence. We were on the same page.

"The whole week, we knew we were ready for the moment."

Indiana never looked out of place on a field with one of college football's most prominent programs. The Hoosiers started Saturday's game by sacking Oregon quarterback Dante Moore and stopping the Ducks on fourth down later in the drive. Indiana's first offensive play was a 24-yard pass from Mendoza to Sarratt.

The Hoosiers trailed for only five minutes — all in the first quarter — against an Oregon outfit that entered Saturday with 18 consecutive wins at Autzen Stadium.

When Moore hit receiver Malik Benson for a 44-yard touchdown in the first quarter, Indiana responded with a touchdown. When Mendoza threw a pick-six to tie the game in the fourth quarter, Indiana responded with a touchdown.

The Hoosiers never batted an eye.

"When you have adversity in games like this, a lot of teams kind of handle that differently. We embrace it," senior linebacker Aiden Fisher said. "We love that. We're going to take it head-on and we're going to go out as a unit all together.

"Just complete buy-in of confidence and love for one another and just playing really good football right now."

Cignetti wants to avoid comparisons between Indiana's 2024 and 2025 teams. The significance of the Hoosiers' win Saturday depends on what they do the rest of the way, he said.

But there's no downplaying the historical meaning of Indiana's victory. The Hoosiers were 1-72 all-time against teams ranked inside the top five in the Associated Press poll, and they'd lost 46 straight games in such matchups — tied for the longest drought ever.

"I think it's huge for it to happen," Wyatt said postgame. "I think that's pretty big to make history in the program. I think as a team we're just all excited. We kind of knew what we were getting into. We always knew that we could win this game, this game was very winnable, and we came out and got it done."

The Hoosiers ruffled plenty of feathers en route to national relevancy last season. Old money doesn't take kindly to new money, especially when the Cignetti-branded dollar bills talked a big game.

Cignetti felt he had to be bold and brash. He wanted to wake up an Indiana fanbase that had grown so numb, so accustomed to being uncompetitive. Fisher, who followed Cignetti from James Madison University to Bloomington, said the program only knew losing when he arrived.

Indiana had to change mindsets. First, it changed its own. Now, it changed the country's. Not that the Hoosiers particularly care.

"I would just say a lot of people that had those comments last year, none of them played a snap of football for Indiana. None of them really helped in our preparation," Fisher said. "So, at the end of the day, we didn't really care. It was really the next team on our schedule that we had to prepare for and go out there and win a football game.

"The credibility thing, we'll let the media handle it. We're just going to focus on winning football games one at a time."

Mendoza, who arrived at Indiana for winter workouts after transferring from Cal, quickly learned he chose a program with complete investment from the top-down — and an innate ability to hear criticism and turn it into motivation.

"I don't think a lot of guys on the team are out there really giving much importance to what everyone on the outside is saying," Mendoza said. "We know who we are as a team, and we know what we built throughout this entire offseason.

"Whenever the media is saying, 'Hey, Indiana was a one-year fluke,' there was never a dash in anybody's eye, because everything stayed within the program."

Indiana wants the spotlight. The Hoosiers aren't scared of big moments. They're chasing big stages and, after Saturday's game, the right to dream about big trophies.

Sarratt said Tuesday the Hoosiers didn't feel an added chip on their shoulder to prove themselves against an elite opponent. Indiana doesn't need to prove anything to anyone outside its locker room, Sarratt said.

But the Hoosiers proved plenty Saturday night. They're a legitimate national championship contender, and they don't even feel they played their best game.

Fisher said Indiana put "a lot of ugly things on film," be it misfits or the explosive plays it allowed. Sarratt noted the Hoosiers are "nowhere near where we want to be right now."

Indiana is, however, exactly where it wants to be in the college football hierarchy. The Hoosiers are no longer knocking on the door of the elites — they're at the dinner table. And soon enough, they may be at the head of the table.

"I think it just kind of shows what the limit to this team is, and I don't think we've found it yet," said linebacker Isaiah Jones, who had two sacks and one tackle for loss. "So, I think it's just something that's exciting for the team to see."

It's exciting for the fans, too, and for Dolson, who watched Indiana go 1-16 in his first two years as a student in 1984-85. But Dolson never lost belief. He never stopped dreaming of days, and games, like Saturday.

As Dolson soaked in the immediate aftermath of Indiana's win, fans serenaded him. He didn't play a snap or devise a game plan, but he set off the alarm that woke the giant resting in Bloomington.

"It's a great win, great step," Dolson said. "Just got to keep rolling now."