FOOTBALL

Following historic season for Indiana football, it’s back to the drawing board. Why? — ‘That’s part of being never satisfied’

Curt Cignetti is now the hunted as Indiana football looks to replicate the 2024 season with higher standards and expectations ahead.

Published

2 days ago

February 13, 2025

Alec Lasley

Curt Cignetti is now the hunted as Indiana football looks to replicate the 2024 season with higher standards and expectations ahead. (Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images)

The landscape around college football has changed and the ability to flip a roster and rebuild a program in one year is now a proven blueprint across the country. Curt Cignetti is not the only coach to be able to institute a total rebuild in such a short time, but he’s now turned into the poster boy of program turnarounds. So even after an extremely successful season for Indiana football in 2024, there’s been no time to rest for Cignetti and his staff because 2025 arrives as a season that is even more important than the one that just wrapped up.

Indiana exceeded any and all expectations in Cignetti’s first season — there’s no question about that. He took Indiana football to the College Football Playoff, finished 11-2 and had its only two losses come against the two teams playing in the National Championship Game.

But being the hunter is quite different than the hunted, something Indiana will be this year. So, ever since the season wrapped up on Dec. 20, it’s been full steam ahead for the staff trying to put together a team that can not only compete like it did a year ago, but exceed it.

“Well, I think you have high standards in everything you do, right? And if you prepare the right way, you expect success,” Cignetti said last month. “You don’t have a lot of time to enjoy it because the next challenge is coming up and you’ve got to get ready and you’ve got to prepare for that accordingly or you’re not going to have success.

“So I think that’s part of being never satisfied. And that’s the separator between good and great, is never being satisfied and resting on your laurels.”

Indiana turned over its roster through the transfer portal last year, with a large majority of its key players coming in being seniors. So, following the end of the 2024 season, it was right back to the transfer portal for this staff.

Now only did it land key components that it needed, but they replicated — and even exceeded — some of the talent and depth that it had a season ago.

“Well, I think winning opens doors. There’s no doubt about it,” Cignetti said. “Now, whether they’re more talented remains to be seen. We haven’t had a practice yet.

“We like who we got. They checked the boxes in terms of character, athletic ability. Almost all of them were starters where they came from. I think we had one guy that had started and played significant minutes but wasn’t a full-time starter. So they fit what we’re looking for and they fit our positions of need.”

Talent is important, yes, but so is fit. That was so critical in year one for Cignetti when building the foundation for what he wanted the culture to be in Bloomington. Now, it’s even more of a deciding factor as he looks to build on what’s already been set in such a short period of time.

“All we ask of anybody in this program is be accountable, be where you’re supposed to be, and hopefully five minutes early, do your best, and rub off on others positively and the process will take care of itself,” he said.

As spring practice slowly gets underway, the incoming 2025 class includes 42 newcomers, with 33 already enrolled and on campus — with 19 being transfers.

One part that has been critical for IU’s culture — and will be again with so many new pieces getting acclimated with the program — has been the retention of keys players. While Indiana lost a good amount of its core from last year due to graduation, it didn’t lost many key pieces to the transfer portal.

A big reason for that? The hunger that they feel after how last year ended.

“I can promise you, this team is a hungry, humble team right now that’s working really hard in the offseason program,” Cignetti said. “And we’ve got to string together days, months, heading into the fall.”