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SOUTH BEND, IN - DECEMBER 20: Notre Dame Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman talks with Indiana Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti prior to the start of the CFP first round game between the Indiana Hoosiers and Notre Dame Fighting Irish on December 20, 2024 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, IN. (Photo by Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) | Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Indiana Hoosiers head coach, Curt Cignetti, is an incredible football coach and accomplished something absolutely NO ONE thought could be done… he guided IU to a national championship in football last season.
Now that I have the tip of the cap out of the way… Curt Cignetti is also an extremely delusional douchebag who’s default mode is just crap-talking followed by amnesia. The most recent case of Cignetti talking as if he just chugged a bottle of Malört, was during a sit down with the Big 10 Network.
“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.It’d be a great in-state game. I guess there’s a backstory to that — I don’t quite know what it is. It is what it is. The Big 10 schedule is pretty darn tough too.”
The backstory is that Indiana just cancelled a scheduled home and home series against Notre Dame because they (Cignetti and the entire Indiana athletic department) are too scared to play ANYONE out of conference that isn’t from the Group of Six or FCS.
Cignetti is just following the script, but he said the quite part out loud with, “pretty darn tough too.”
But, there’s something deeper here than just lining up to play a bunch of cupcakes. Cignetti has openly bragged about playing cupcakes. IU follows, according to him, the “SEC model” of scheduling. Everybody knows it, and because of the championship last season, the media has mostly given him a pass… until this Notre Dame cancellation.
And that’s a problem for him.
The last team to beat Indiana was Notre Dame, and the Irish beat that ass badly in front of a national audience in the first campus playoff game in FBS history. That pounding came after a week of Cignetti talking all sorts of crap about being a team who’s big thing is beating top 25 teams (which was a giant stretch at the time). Notre Dame embarrassed him and sent him packing.
Curt got his revenge in 2026 by winning the title, but they never had to play Notre Dame. Even with the trophy in hand, it’s hard to legitimately be a smug cornholio to a team that made him look like an idiot. Add that an offseason which has seen the media have much more focus on the Irish and their chances for a title than the reigning champs.
He’s jealous of Notre Dame — which is just crazy after the season he had in 2025, but it’s obvious. Even more obvious is the fear he has in playing Notre Dame, but still trying to spin it in a way that he believes people will support. That’s why he threw that conference line in that quote. He knows the low-hanging (and ultimately just dumb) fruit is with the “join a conference” crowd.
Notre Dame is a problem now for Cignetti. He chickened out, tried to talk trash, and most people with half a brain are now calling it for what it is. There is, of course, someone with less than a half of a brain cheering this on.
Cignetti is a great coach, but he’s no Jimmy Johnson or Pete Carroll — two coaches who didn’t run from a challenge but rather ran headfirst while naked and screaming something ancient and feral. He wants to talk his way nto being the top dog in the state of Indiana rather than play his way into the spot. It’s cowardly behavior, and something college football has been plagued with for a number of years now.
If he truly wants greatness, he has to do something about the problem 197 miles north of Bloomington. Notre Dame isn’t going away no matter how hard he wishesthey would. Until IU plays and actually BEATS Notre Dame, that cloud of “other team” is going to hang over him and the Hoosiers. While some coaches may be fine with that, he clearly has an issue with it — but is still too cowardly to face it.
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