Indiana HC Curt Cignetti shoots down buzz of $40 million national title roster
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Indiana football burst onto the college football scene two seasons ago when Curt Cignetti led the Hoosiers on a shocking run to the College Football Playoff. They one-upped themselves in 2025, running the table and winning their first national championship with a perfect 16-0 campaign.
Indiana isn’t exactly a recruiting hotbed, and Cignetti and company won the title without the assistance of a bunch of glamorous five-star recruits. While there was some NFL talent on the roster, such as quarterback Fernando Mendoza and wide receiver Omar Cooper Jr., Indiana was largely at a talent disadvantage against some of the top teams.
Naturally, roster building and NIL is a hot topic for the top teams in college football, and everyone wants to know how much everyone else is spending. On Wednesday, Alabama GM Courtney Morgan made headlines when he said that some of the top teams in the nation are spending more than $40 million to build championship-level rosters.
Indiana, being the roster-building anomaly that it has been under Cignetti, is not spending quite that much on its roster, and the national champion head coach confirmed as much on Thursday.
“Correct, not even close,” Cignetti stated on social media, in response to someone claiming that the Hoosiers did not spend that much.
Now, the likes of Mendoza and some of the other high-level transfers surely commanded a lot of NIL money, but Indiana wasn’t spending nearly as much on its roster as the likes of Georgia, Oregon, Ohio State, and others.
Now, Mendoza, Cooper, and a number of others are off to the NFL Draft, and Cignetti was back to work in the transfer portal to build out the roster and stay atop college football. Former TCU quarterback Josh Hoover will replace Mendoza as the starting quarterback, and Nick Marsh from Michigan State will be one of his top targets.
Indiana may very well increase its NIL spending now that Cignetti has proven he is a championship coach. Regardless, there will be no pressure on the Hoosiers after they already reached the mountaintop in year two.
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