Indiana's Curt Cignetti Jabs SEC on Scheduling at Big Ten Football Media Days

The Hoosiers' second-year coach said Indiana adopted an "SEC scheduling philosophy" in canceling a series with Virginia.

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti speaks to the media during Big Ten Football Media Days in Las Vegas. | Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images

Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti spoke as brashly as his team played last season, when the Hoosiers came from nowhere to win their first 10 games and reach the College Football Playoff. Cignetti enters Year 2 in Bloomington with a similar attitude.

"I get questions, how are you going to sustain it? We're not looking to sustain it. We're looking to improve it," Cignetti said at Big Ten Football Media Days in Las Vegas.

Cignetti no doubt will continue to make headlines in college football, as he did in Las Vegas by jabbing the SEC's scheduling model. Here are some of the top excerpts from Cignetti's press conference at Big Ten Football Media Days.

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On his team: I think staff continuity has been a big part of our success through the years, regardless of where we've been, and kudos to them. With the 10-0 start, the staff holds the distinction of being the only staff in NCAA history to start the season 10-0 at two different schools and did it in successive seasons back-to-back.

I get questions, how are you going to sustain it? We're not looking to sustain it. We're looking to improve it. And the way you do that is by having the right people on the bus, upstairs in the coaches' offices, downstairs in the locker room; having a blueprint plan and process; high standards of expectations, never lowering your standards; day-to-day plan, highly structured and organized; organizational discipline to improve in critical areas, which usually you have to do with player development, scheme development, program development, and create those intangibles entering the season.

Consistency day in, day out. Consistency is huge so that we can play fast, physical, relentless, smart, disciplined, poised, not affected by success, not affected by failure, and never ever satisfied until the game is over. This year's team has a lot of nice pieces. I would use that term, "pieces." Now we've got to mold this group into a team in fall camp.

"Everything's earned, not given, now." 🗣️

Curt Cignetti talks about Year 2 in Bloomington.#B1GFootball pic.twitter.com/daOIMAPtXm

— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) July 22, 2025

QUESTION: You guys recently announced that you canceled a future home-and-home series with Virginia. Can you talk about what went into that decision and why you think that's in the best interest for your program and the fans?

CURT CIGNETTI: That was a scheduling philosophy that began before I was hired, but I did sign off on it upon being hired before our first season, okay? Look, here's the bottom line, okay, we picked up an extra home game, and we play nine conference games. The two best conferences in college football, any football guy that's objective will tell you is the Big Ten and the SEC, all right? 12 of the 16 SEC teams play three G5 or an FCS game. 12 of those teams play 36 games, 29 G5 games and seven FCS games, and one less conference game. All right?

So we figured we would just adopt SEC scheduling philosophy, you know. Some people don't like it. I'm more focused in on those nine conference games. Not only do we want to play nine conference games, okay, and have the four-four championship - the playoff format, we want to have play-in games to decide who plays in those playoffs.

Championship weekend, let's play three versus six and four versus five. You want to decide that on the field and make sure everybody's strength of schedule is what it needs to be? Let's make everybody play nine conference games, and on championship weekend three will play six, four will play five. There's still room for another at-large in that format.

Why shouldn't the Big Ten have four AQs because Ohio State actually finished fourth in the conference at the end of the season. Indiana and Penn State were tied for second. They won the tie-breaker. Ohio State won the national championship. You want to put the best teams in the playoffs, give the best leagues the AQ, but make them earn it with play-in games.

We wouldn't be opposed to Big Ten-SEC regular season games every year. We need to standardize the schedule across the board if we want to have objective criteria for who should be in the playoffs and who shouldn't, and we need to take the decision-making off the committee to some degree.

QUESTION: Your first season culminated in an 11-1 season and a CFP berth. A meteoric rise in just 14 months. You already talked based on the standard a little bit. How are you ensuring your Cinderella culture now becomes the standard and not just the exception?

CURT CIGNETTI: Hey, look, the theme of this year really is humble and hungry versus noise and clutter. Humble and hungry. If are you humble and you are hungry and you got that fire burning inside your belly and you're committed to high standards, okay, and the leadership has good plan, structured, organized plan that's going to lead to your development and team development, then you're going to reach your full potential. Okay?

If you are resting on your laurels and you got the warm fuzzies based on what social media is telling you or what you read on social media and you think it's just going to happen again because it happened before, you ain't going to be a very happy camper when the season is over. My job is to make sure that doesn't happen.

Now, I'm really good at a couple of things. I know I got to improve in a lot of ways, but I'm really good at keeping the main thing the main thing and being a watchdog for complacency and stomping it out. When we go to camp and we get ready for that first game, these guys will be thinking like we need them to think.

QUESTION: You talked about it is pretty hard to top the greatest season in school history. Last year you talked about how you were excited about NIL. You just talked about how you have the second largest alumni base. What are some key non-negotiables that you have for NIL budgeting or even just ethics going forward to kind of prevent some of the things you just talked about, like complacency, especially whether it be high school or kids coming out the portal?

CURT CIGNETTI: I think we're talking about two different issues there. On one side we're talking about player development and becoming the best you can be, and on the other side we're talking about institutional resources that lead to retention and recruiting.

Our goal is to be the best. This is a great league. There's some schools in this conference that have great tradition for a long, long time and have some incredible resources. I personally -- my personal goal is we're in the top one-third of the conference when it comes to resources in all areas that are critical to program success.

Now, the landscape is still changing, changing as we speak today. You've got to be light on your feet and nimble, and at some point hopefully down the road this thing will settle down and we'll have clear rules and regulations on how we operate.