The artificial crowd noise has been pumping through the speakers at Memorial Stadium all week as IU football prepares to face Iowa.
When the Hoosiers confront 70,000 black and gold clad Hawkeye fans for a homecoming tussle in Iowa City Saturday afternoon (3:30 p.m. ET, Peacock), they should be ready for the real thing.
“It’s loud, obnoxious,” center Pat Coogan said on Tuesday of the practice noise. “It rings your ears. We had it for the whole two hours. No breaks because you won’t get any breaks on Saturday. It’s good preparation for us.”
10 months ago, 10-0 Indiana wasn’t ready.
With some of the offensive linemen unable to hear, and a quarterback playing on an injured knee, chaos ensued at Ohio State. Five sacks. Eight tackles for loss. And a crushing loss due in large part to an offense ground to a halt by a defense able to time their snaps.
“I thought we’d be able to handle it,” IU coach Curt Cignetti said after his team lost in Columbus last November. “Some of the offensive linemen could hear, but the center couldn’t. … Our guys just didn’t respond very well. Simple. Sometimes we had missed assignments. Sometimes we had communication errors. Sometimes we got physically beat. But it wasn’t very pretty.”
Indiana lost two of their last three games to end the 2024 season. Cignetti says IU could hear at Notre Dame in the first round of the College Football Playoff, but the result was the same. Two losses, on the road, in hostile environments — against the two teams that played in the national championship game.
Cignetti has had to spend the last nine months wearing the criticism and doubt that ensued. His Hoosiers couldn’t win big games on the road in 2024. And they have to travel to Iowa, Oregon and Penn State in 2025.
You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse, never stay the same, Cignetti likes to say. And the disappointment from the losses at Ohio State and Notre Dame has no doubt been gnawing at the second-year head coach.
“In the offseason, you spend time on it (handling crowd noise),” Cignetti said this week. “Obviously, it will be a big point of emphasis in practice.”
The big stage shouldn’t be a massive shock to quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who is in his third year as a starter at the Power 4 level. Road games at Oregon, Auburn and Florida State pop on his resume.
Mendoza’s ability to communicate with center Pat Coogan will be key, and the Notre Dame transfer also has a wealth of big game road experience under his belt.
“It’s a challenge to prepare for,” Coogan said. “You have to prepare for it every day. Can’t just turn it on for Friday and expect to be good. You have to make sure everyone is tuned into the cadences. Make sure everyone is on the same page.”
If you survey Indiana’s key offensive contributors to this point, they all have big game road experience. The moment shouldn’t be too big for anyone. At the same time, Indiana hasn’t won at Kinnick Stadium since 2007. And the Hawkeyes have home wins over each of Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan at home in the last decade.
But Iowa is by no means invincible at home. They’ve had just one undefeated season playing at Iowa City in the last 20 years, and in 10 of those years they lost multiple games at Kinnick. If Indiana fancies itself as a regular CFP contender under Cignetti, this is the kind of challenging road game it needs to win with regularity.
If road favorite Indiana is prepared for the noise, they have a good chance to enter their first bye week 5-0.
And after stewing in the Ohio State loss for months, is there much doubt Cignetti and the Hoosiers will be ready?
No.
They’ve been thinking about this very moment obsessively since December.
So what’s the plan?
You’ll have to wait until Saturday afternoon, says a grinning Cignetti.
“I’m not going to tell you what we’re going to do.”
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