If there’s value to be gained by losing for the first time in nearly two years, IU football coach Curt Cignetti wasn’t ready to acknowledge it on Saturday afternoon in the immediate aftermath of his team’s 19-15 loss to Ohio State.
Indiana hadn’t lost any game since December of 2024, and it hadn’t lost a regular season game since November of that year.
If you’re an Indiana fan, hopefully at some point you’ve taken a moment to let that sink in. The run was 14 games longer than the previous program-record high of eight straight wins. And the 19-game home winning streak was nearly double the previous high of 10 straight.
But for the Indiana players and coaches, can that level of success ultimately become more dangerous than failure?
Losing to the No. 4 team in the nation isn’t necessarily a harbinger of impending doom, but perhaps there have been red flags masked by nearly 700 days of uninterrupted success on the scoreboard?
Cignetti insisted Saturday his team already learned its lessons after a close call at Nebraska. But did they?
The Hoosiers made uncharacteristic mistakes, with turnovers, missed assignments, penalties, missed field goals, inaccurate throws, struggles in the running game — you name it. The miscues weren’t out of the ordinary for a typical college football team, but avoiding avoiding mistakes and executing at a high level have been defining features of Indiana’s 22-game winning streak.
Indiana has been one of the least mistake-prone teams in college football during its historic run of success.
“Before you can win it, you can’t lose it,” Cignetti likes to say.
But what happens when you lose it, and mistakes played a role in that loss?
The IU head coach credits his time with coaching legend Nick Saban as foundational when it comes to developing his blueprint for success as a head coach.
And part of Saban’s formula is learning from losses, as rare as they might have been.
Saban believes losing allows for a reset, and a chance to acknowledge shortcomings and complacency.
“The more success you have, the harder it is to sustain it,” Saban said recently in an interview posted by Alabama Athletics.
“Because people become more outcome oriented, the expectation becomes — win every game. And its harder to stay focused and not get overcome with that. It’s much harder to deal with success than it is failure. When people get humiliated, they’re willing to change, listen and learn. When people are having success, they seem to think that the success that we’ve had in the past is going to impact what happens in the future, and when you start thinking like that, you’re really infected with success, you get complacent, you don’t pay attention to detail, you don’t prepare the right way, you start creating bad habits, those habits start showing up in your performance.”
Again, Indiana lost one game. It lost for the first time in nearly two years.
The sky isn’t falling.
But still, lessons must be learned. And with the wounds fresh, the opportunity to improve has never been better.
Ohio State learned these lessons in 2024, following two regular season losses with a national title. After all, you don’t have to go 16-0 to reach the ultimate goal.
Some of the Indiana players know losing more than others.
Safety Amare Ferrell went just 3-9 in his first season at IU. He sees the value in learning from this loss.
“We all hate to lose,” Ferrell said. “We haven’t lost in a while, but I mean, we still have to just let this loss teach us and move on forward.”
And even if he wasn’t ready to acknowledge his team might have needed Saturday’s smack in the face, Cignetti seems to instinctively know it.
No.
Of course he knows it.
His messaging to the team already reflects that.
“Sun comes up tomorrow, and get ready for Michigan,” he said. “Learn from the things we got to learn from.”
“And it’s still all ahead of us. We can accomplish anything we want, all our goals, except going undefeated.”
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