The rise of Indiana under Curt Cignetti overlaps almost perfectly with the fall of Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State.
Cignetti came to the program with the most losses in the history of college football and the most losing seasons since 2000, and immediately went 27-2 and won a national title.
Gundy had 18-straight winning seasons and 18-straight bowl appearances. He had four seasons of 10 or more wins and two conference titles. But Gundy was just 4-11 over the last two seasons. He was fired midseason in 2025 after a 1-2 start.
The rise of Indiana and the fall of Oklahoma State aren’t really related, but the polar opposite trends highlight what’s possible on both ends of the spectrum in the rapidly changing landscape of college football.
Gundy lost at Oregon 69-3 in his second to last game as the head coach of the Cowboys. That score had some Hoosier fans nervous.
But Indiana would go out to Eugene a few weeks later and beat the Ducks. Later the Hoosiers would beat Oregon again, 56-22 at the Peach Bowl, and of course they’d finish the year 16-0 and national champions.
Gundy’s 2007 Oklahoma State team beat IU at the Insight Bowl 49-33. That was the first time Indiana had been bowl eligible since 1993. And they would not be bowl eligible again until 2015.
What does Gundy think of Indiana winning the title, and what Cignetti has done with a program that had just three winning seasons in the 29 years before he arrived?
“I was shocked,” Gundy told Colin Cowherd on The Herd.
“This era that we’re in in college football that we’re talking about is allowing this to happen,” “What Coach [Cignetti] did at Indiana was amazing from the standpoint that he brought a number of players from James Madison. They instilled his culture that he believed in. He hit a home run with Mendoza. Brings Mendoza in, Mendoza plays like Superman throughout the year and had great work habits, great leadership. He was tough, stayed off social media and was all about ball.
“What Coach [Cignetti] did was put a lot of pressure on everybody else in the country because you’re going to have donors that are giving millions of dollars now, you’re going to have administration and athletic directors that are saying, ‘If they can do it at Indiana, why can’t you do it?’ And I think that’s going to put a lot of pressure on coaches because what he did was truly amazing.”
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