Curt Cignetti Has Absolutely No Interest in Playing Notre Dame

For my money, Curt Cignetti is the best head coach in all of college football.

When you do what he has done in two years at Indiana, it's tough to make a case for pretty much anyone else.

He took the losingest program in the history of the sport and has proceeded to go 27-2 and win a national championship in two seasons.

You can't argue with the success of Curt Cignetti at Indiana, but that doesn't mean everything he says makes sense.

Curt Cignetti Talks Big Game and Delivers to Date

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti has never been one to hold back when talking about other programs.

When he was introduced at Indiana just over two years ago, he made the famous comments to "Google me" after he was repeatedly asked about why his time with the Hoosiers would be different than other coaches.

He then went to an Indiana basketball game and declared that "Purdue sucks, but so does Michigan and Ohio State".

It was laughable at the time, but two years later it looks like Indiana is going to be a force in college football as long as he's there.

As much as he hit it out of the park with those, his Notre Dame comments this week sound a bit more ridiculous.

Curt Cignetti Calls Out Notre Dame in Latest Comments

The Big Ten Network is making its annual preseason rounds to every Big Ten football camp and doing a day with each team.

Indiana had its day on the network this past Friday, and Cignetti was asked about the recently canceled series with Notre Dame, to which he said:

"I’d like to play Notre Dame. They ought to come to our place twice, and we’ll go there once, since they’re not in a conference."

Uhh, what?

Nick Shepkowski's Quick Takeaway

Cignetti knows exactly what he's doing.

Just like last year when he made the comments about the SEC conference schedule only being eight games, compared to the nine the Big Ten plays, he's clearly leaning into the narrative that Notre Dame doesn't play anybody during the regular season, and trying to push his program and the Big Ten up as a result.

Throw something out there that fires up the Indiana and Big Ten fan base, but that has no chance of actually happening.

And the Indiana faithful took it and ran - just as you'd expect a fanbase to do for a coach who just won it a national championship.

Cignetti's argument would carry more weight if Indiana played anyone with a pulse outside of the Big Ten, though. If it only canceled Notre Dame from the schedule, then fine.

This is a program that has canceled series with Virginia and Louisville in recent years as well, though, so let's not pretend independence has anything to do with it.

Cignetti wants three warmup games for his team before Big Ten play starts.

That's fine. That's well within the rules.

Kansas State did it forever under Bill Snyder and Indiana just won the national championship after a laughable non-conference slate.

Now that Indiana football is something for the first time in its history, the game would be a lot of fun for the state, as plenty have been rightfully accused of being Notre Dame fans for football and Indiana fans for basketball.

Unfortunately, the current rules have no demands for a Power Four team to play another Power Four team out of their conference; Notre Dame and Indiana will only ever meet in the College Football Playoff for the foreseeable future.

And as a reminder: any program is allowed to operate independently, but very few could actually pull it off successfully in today's era.

There's a big difference.

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