Cam Cameron knows the challenges of achieving high level football success at Indiana as well as anyone.
Cameron’s five-year record as the head coach of the Hoosiers from 1997 to 2001 was 18-37, with his best season coming in 2001 when Indiana won four of their last five games and posted a 5-6 mark with wins over Wisconsin and Michigan State.
The successor to Bill Mallory at IU, Cameron sees success for a coach at Indiana through the lens of the program in the 80s and early 90s.
“So far it (Indiana) hasn’t been a place you go and advance your career,” Cameron said last month on the Straight Down the Middle podcast. “It’s not a place where you win a Big Ten championship. It’s been a place where you try to get the Brass Spittoon, the Old Oaken Bucket, and in the old days you’d try to get the Bourbon Barrell if you beat Kentucky, and then you try to go to a bowl game.”
If there is a path to success at IU beyond what Cameron described, he believes it starts with the position both he and new head coach Curt Cignetti played.
And it sounds like Indiana AD Scott Dolson might have consulted with Cameron on what attributes would give a coach the best chance to compete for championships in Bloomington.
Dolson said at Cignetti’s introductory press conference one of the main criteria in the search was someone who had worked with quarterbacks and had a proven track record developing players at that position.
Cignetti was a quarterback at West Virginia from 1979-82 and has been involved with the position throughout his career. In his most recent head coaching stint at James Madison, he had four quarterbacks in five years, and all four were conference Players of the Year on offense.
A former quarterback himself under Lee Corso at IU, Cameron knows the position very well too. He coached QBs at Michigan, LSU and in the NFL, along with multiple stints as an NFL offensive coordinator. He was the coach at IU when Antwaan Randle El became the first player in NCAA Division I history to pass for 40 career TDs and rush for 40 career TDs.
“Football, no matter what level it is, is a quarterback driven sport,” Cameron said. “You need to have someone who personally has a proven record of recruiting a quality quarterback, and then have a staff that then knows what to do with a quality quarterback.
“The rules favor the offense, so you better be a guy that can play really good offense, especially at a school like Indiana. You’re not gonna go in there and just win with defense. You gotta go with offense, special teams, and you’ve gotta be able to slow people down within reason.”
Cignetti, his offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, and quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri, have been together running high level offense for a decade.
Cameron said he has known Cignetti for a long time, and he believes Indiana has hired a head coach who just might be able to bring a long awaited new level of success. He pointed to another Big Ten program as a potential model.
Iowa was 54-124-5 for the two decades before Hayden Fry arrived in 1979. It wasn’t until year three that Fry recorded a winning record. Iowa went to the Rose Bowl that year, and they’ve been one of the league’s better programs since.
“Cignetti is a quarterback guy. He’s been around football his whole life, and he knows what he’s got to do with a quarterback position. … I’ve known this guy for a long time. He might be the kinda guy that could pull off something like Iowa has done.”
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