MIAMI — When Curt Cignetti, his coaching staff, and his army of James Madison transfers arrived in Bloomington to begin one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history in December 2023, it put Indiana football’s existing players in difficult positions.
The JMU players who followed Cignetti to IU couldn’t know what the jump to Big Ten football would look like, but they knew what Cignetti and his staff were all about. Those players worked with most of the same coaches for extensive time in Harrisonburg, Va. And that group, with players like Elijah Sarratt, Kaelon Black, Mikail Kamara, Aiden Fisher, Tyrique Tucker, and others, has been integral to Indiana’s rise over the last two seasons.
But existing Hoosiers didn’t have those years of experience with Cignetti. Of course, the new regime would decide that some players from Tom Allen’s final roster would no longer be needed in Bloomington. But the guys the new staff did want faced a precarious situation. Based on only a few conversations with Cignetti and his staff, those players had to decide whether to return to the then-losingest program in college football history, or to try and win elsewhere via the transfer portal.
Former IU safety Bryant Fitzgerald watched his old teammates go through that dilemma from afar, having finished his career in 2022. He saw some of those players leave in the portal, and he couldn’t blame them. That was as good an opportunity for a clean break with a program as a football player can get, and given Indiana’s history before Cignetti, it wasn’t unreasonable to suggest other schools could give those guys better chances to win and develop.
But plenty from that group stuck around with the new staff. And 27 of those returnees, including walk-ons, will take the field on Monday to play for a national championship with that same Indiana program. Guys like Omar Cooper Jr., E.J. Williams Jr., Amare Ferrell, Jamari Sharpe, and Isaiah Jones, among others, have become key pieces for the Hoosiers after seeing the program at some serious low points.
“Those guys that were there, those guys have been through a lot. … It’s well-deserved for those guys,” Fitzgerald told The Daily Hoosier in a phone interview Tuesday. “It could’ve been easy (to say), ‘You know what, I’m out of here, I’m about to hop in the portal. I don’t wanna take a risk on a new coach coming here and it still being the same thing.’ So it’s kudos and hats off to those guys for sticking through it and being in there through the tough times.”
The ride for Indiana football in reaching the College Football Playoff National Championship Game has been a long, winding road for everyone involved with the program. But it’s been a particularly arduous, and now rewarding, journey for those holdover players.
The former JMU players arrived in Bloomington in 2024, having only experienced winning at the collegiate level. Earlier this season, Jones recalled having to remind fellow linebackers Fisher and Jailin Walker what IU’s program looked like, not very long ago.
“I would joke with those guys. I was like, ‘You don’t know what it was like before this. You don’t know, the 3-9s, the 4-8s.’ So for me, and I know for a lot of the guys that stayed over, it was special,” Jones said in October. “For us, it meant a lot to be able to see what we could turn this place into, and the involvement we get from the fans and the support we get from the the boosters and the fans.”
Indiana’s offensive line displays more continuity from the Allen era to the Cignetti era than any other area on the team. The Hoosiers have four offensive line starters who suited up for them in 2022 and 2023: left tackle Carter Smith, left guard Drew Evans, right guard Bray Lynch, and right tackle Kahlil Benson. Additionally, offensive line coach Bob Bostad is the lone coaching holdover from Allen’s final staff at IU.
Bostad’s return made the decisions easier for some of those players. But it was still a difficult position to be in. Tackle Zen Michalski, who transferred in from Ohio State this year, admires his teammates who have stuck it out.
“I think where a lot of people talk about with our team is like, all the JMU guys that we brought in, and all the other guys from other teams. There’s a lot of Indiana guys that have been here for four or five years,” Michalski told TDH after the Peach Bowl. “I just think that it just takes determination, and everyone in this room has that. It’s shown off a lot.”
Within Indiana’s holdovers, Benson and Louis Moore hold unique places.
Both players opted to leave IU in the transfer portal upon Cignetti’s arrival. Benson went to Colorado, and Moore went to Ole Miss. The Hoosiers particularly wanted Moore to return, after he tied for the team lead with three interceptions in 2023. But he opted to join Lane Kiffin’s Rebels instead.
However, both Benson and Moore went back into the portal after the 2024 season and rejoined Indiana. While both players left and came back, they, too, have seen what the Hoosiers were and what they’ve become. Their roads to this point took different paths than the rest of the roster, but they share in this team’s accomplishments the same as everyone else.
“I’m pretty sure he (Moore) thought in his mind that Ole Miss would be a better football team than us, and from the experience he had at Indiana before we got here, they didn’t win. It was hard to argue with his logic. Him being away and being at Ole Miss and having to watch us win, I know that probably hurt him in his soul a little bit.” safeties coach Ola Adams told TDH during the CFP National Championship media day. “He’s just real fortunate to be able to go through this season and experience this. I’m very happy for him because he’s a great kid. To see him, get a chance to go out of winner puts a smile on my face.”
The Hoosiers getting set to take on Miami at Hard Rock Stadium on Monday, in the biggest game of their athletic careers.
IU’s players and coaches have all had different journeys to this point. They’ve all faced obstacles along the way, whether on the field, off the field, or both. The CFP National Championship Game gives them an opportunity to finish off an already historic season and cement this team as one of the greatest in modern college football history.
Every part of that last sentence would’ve been difficult to imagine being reality in November 2023. No group knows that better than the players who went through those trying seasons full of losing, the thing Indiana — up until recently — had done more than anyone else in the sport’s long history.
Indiana’s holdover players, the ones who donned cream and crimson when Tom Allen was head coach and stuck around with Curt Cignetti, are in this position because of hard work and dedication, but also because of the difficult decision they made to remain in Bloomington.
“(It was) definitely a huge leap of faith,” tight end James Bomba told TDH during the CFP National Championship media day. “But it shows how much these guys trusted coach Cig. And obviously, we’ve reaped the rewards of that.”
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