Indiana’s 38-3 Rose Bowl win over Alabama felt like a sea change in college football.
In the age of the transfer portal and players being compensated, the sport’s former laughing stock completely dominated the 800-pound gorilla.
Indiana’s coaches are still enjoying the enormity of that win.
Head coach Curt Cignetti quipped “Roll Tide” when President Donald Trump read that 38-3 score at the White House this week. Defensive coordinator Bryant Haines referred to comments by former Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson about IU’s defense as “adorable.”
The trolling of Alabama has extended far and wide, including one former admirer who playfully now prefers the Hoosiers.
The story has been much different in Tuscaloosa, as Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer has had to sit in the loss for months.
DeBoer was asked on the Always College Football podcast how the Rose Bowl loss to IU informs him about the changes necessary within in his program.
It was probably especially surreal for the former IU offensive coordinator to see his mighty Crimson Tide dismantled so convincingly at the hands of the Hoosiers.
And equally unlikely to realize it is more like Indiana — yes Indiana — that Alabama needs to become.
“I always am first going to give hats off to the people that did it,” DeBoer said. “Coach (Curt) Cignetti did an awesome job of building a team that was just well rounded across the board. Competitive. Great schematically. Had a mentality about them. We saw that. It’s not like we didn’t know what it was supposed to look like. I know what it feels like.
“You can see now, through those experiences … where we need to improve. That’s what we work daily to do is continue to clean up those areas where we fell short. To me, it’s a lot of execution especially when it comes to the run game or stopping the run.
“So again, got to have personnel. Got to be on the same page with what you’re teaching. We continue to work extremely hard to make all those areas come together. Again, you’ve got to give a tip of the hat. They (Indiana) didn’t just do it to us. They did it to a lot of teams throughout the season and even into the playoffs with other teams as well.
“We know we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but you’ve got to tip the hat to coach Cignetti and what that program did there.”
The admissions by DeBoer about Cignetti and Indiana have to be especially painful for the Alabama faithful.
Because Cignetti credits a great deal of his success to the coach DeBoer replaced — program legend Nick Saban.
Cignetti coached under Saban at Alabama for three seasons from 2007 to 2009. And that time in Tuscaloosa catapulted his coaching career.
“After one year with Coach Saban I felt like I had learned more about how to run a program than the previous 27 years as an assistant,” Cignetti said this week on Josh Pate’s podcast.
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