What Curt Cignetti DID NOT Teach Us About Building A Program

With the college football season freshly in the rearview, we have entered the dreaded "offseason" portion of the beloved sport's calendar.

While there is never truly an offseason in college football, with recruiting being a 365 day a year undertaking, these next few months will be about as close as we get to idle minds being allowed to run wild, and with all that will come the hot takes.

One that I've been seeing pop up recently with the crowning of a new national champion is that "every program should try to emulate what Indiana did" and that "coaches are out of excuses after what Curt Cignetti just achieved."

I tried to warn people earlier this year that Cignetti would alter the timeline for every other coach in America when it came to "rebuilding" a desolate program, but even I underestimated just how meteoric his rise would be.

People need to realize how much of a unicorn coach Cig is to truly understand how impossible this run is for Indiana… and how improbable it will be for any other coach to replicate it.

I've said it before, and I will say it again, the Hoosiers were at a talent deficit in virtually every game they played from mid-September onward.

Now, maybe that means we need to reevaluate star ratings somewhere down the line, but as of right now, those star ratings and talent profiles are still the most accurate predictive tools for measuring success in college and NFL Draft positions as well as team success, respectively.

A five-star coming out of high school still has a 60% chance of being drafted, as opposed to the average FBS scholarship player being drafted at a 2-3% clip.

Teams outside the top-15 in the 247Sports Talent Composite ratings never even sniffed a national championship before this year, with Michigan being the lone outlier outside the top-ten in 2023 (13th).

Indiana obliterated both of these statistical measures by being 72nd in the 247Sports Talent Composite ratings and not having a five-star recruit to their name.

Unfortunately, we as fans are prisoners of the moment, so I am already starting to see people pushing the narrative that "stars are dead" and "recruiting doesn't matter."

Frankly, I don't think we can come to a conclusion anywhere close to that.

There isn't nearly enough data to say definitively that Indiana is the new model to which every other program should compare itself to, and I think we can look at recent history to back that up.

Just last year, the Ohio State Buckeyes went on a postseason war path en route to a national title, and they did it with a roster that was ranked third and had a mind-blowing 14 five-stars on it.

Even in this year's playoffs, seven of the 12 teams in the CFP field had rosters ranked in that top-15 sweet spot.

What Curt Cignetti accomplished at Indiana this year will only grow more legendary as the years go by, and it's already being ranked as one of the most improbable runs in recent sports history.

No program should look at this two-year stretch from Cignetti and the Hoosiers and think "if they can do it, so can we."

Rather, we should all look at this for what it is: a miracle run by one of the best coaches in the sport.

To try and emulate what coach Cig just did would be to discredit how special he is as a coach, because no one is recreating what just took place.

I mean, seriously, how many college football coaches have a bowl at Chipotle named after them?

Let's not be reactionary. Just appreciate greatness when it comes along, then continue to forge your own path.

Copying Indiana will only make you, at the very best, a worse version of Indiana.

Respect and appreciate The Cig, because we may never see another one like him again.