Backed by success, Indiana’s Curt Cignetti boldly touts Big Ten as best conference in college football

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In the Big Ten versus SEC throwdown, leave it to Curt Cignetti to shut the door on the entire conversation.

The man who, upon arriving at college football’s head table, suggested those who didn’t know him should Google him because his famed “I win” quip served as the closerfor all the talk surrounding the college football offseason. He was the last coach to speak during the last press conference of media days.

Thanks largely to the abyss of actual football to discuss, the last two weeks have been overrun by the ongoing rhetoric between the SEC and Big Ten.

The two leagues have spent decades preening and posturing around each other, but the conversation has taken an unfamiliar and, for the SEC, at least, uncomfortable shift recently.

Three national championship trophies lined the dais here in Chicago, won in succession by Ohio State, Michigan and Indiana, a should-be, would-be end to the conference domination conversation.

Except old habits die hard and the SEC, leaning into its history, refuses to yield.

Shamed into a nine-game conference season to keep in lockstep with their conference rivals, the folks down South have spent time insisting that the sheer toughness of their league makes such demands impossible. On “The Pat McAfee Show,” ESPN reporter Laura Rutledge even suggested that teams would be gassed by such demands because the SEC is…the SEC.

All of which serves as the backdrop for the mic drop.

Asked about how the rigors of playing in the Big Ten prepped his IU team for the playoffs, Cignetti served up one of his signature smirks.

“We don’t run a hype machine up here in the Midwest,’’ he said. “We believe everything is earned, not given. When we fall short, we say we fell short. We don’t cry a river, whine and complain. That’s why we’re the best.’’

And then he literally walked off the stage.

Once an oddity when he was hired at Indiana and then a curiosity when he tasted immediate success, Cignetti is now the perfect mouthpiece for a conference that suddenly is enjoying puffing out its chest.

He boasts without sounding boastful, sugarcoating what might come off as arrogance with down-home honesty. “If I have a guy that consistently cannot do his best, cannot be on time, cannot rub off positively on others, is uncoachable, he’s not going to be in my program. Right?” he said. “He’s not going to be in my program. The guys that are really productive, they get paid.”

It is a beautiful twist to witness and consider.

In the Big Ten, which includes two teams so certain of the importance of their rivalry they refer to it as “The Game” and another that takes pride in its mundane uniforms, everyone is riding in Indiana’s sidecar. In a small breakout session, Cignetti commanded a crowd that stretched nearly back to the Big Ten Network set, requiring reporters to stand on small structures to get a glimpse of the coach.

And the SEC, which prefers to think it invented the sport, now has to figure out how to catch up with a program that succeeded with a bunch of dudes from James Madison and a quarterback who initially was targeted by Yale.

Everyone wants a Cig.

UCLA, a team that has a touch of history in college football, went out and hired Bob Chesney, whose obscure resume nearly mirrors Cignetti, right down to the last stop at JMU.

Even Barry Odom, the head coach at Purdue who is near contractually obligated to not say nice things about Indiana, couldn’t help himself to note IU’s success story. “It should give every program hope, vision and belief that it can happen.”

It is not that easy, of course. As fascinating as Indiana’s improbable rise from the trash heap has been it will be equally fascinating how a program that has never known success handles it. Cignetti said he will be “stalking complacency,’’ and insists he has not veered from the same gut instinct that got him to the top.

He lamented that the extended season – because he won a national title – meant he had a later start to preparing the team than he wanted. Up until he hopped on a plane to Chicago, he was prepping on the new season’s opponents. He still watches film religiously. And though he recently landed the highest rated recruit in program history in wide receiver Monshun Sales, he has no intention of veering away from his gut instinct.

“A guy might have a lot of talent, be a really good player, and that transcript doesn’t look real good, and I get a vibe that this guy’s a little selfish, can’t see past his nose, I’m not taking him,’’ he said. “I mean, he better be the best wide receiver in the history of football, and then I’m still going to think about it.’’

That he is 65 – a self-described ‘geriatric,’ seemingly makes him all the better armed to handle it all. This is a man who made $125,000 at IUP four years ago; it doesn’t feel like he’s going to get his head turned.

In his small breakout with reporters, Cignetti was weirdly asked if he gets a pedicure.

He shook his head, clearly not interested in wasting his time on such drivel, but when the reporter asked again, Cignetti just said, “What do you think?”

And with that, he was done.

Mic dropped again.

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