When it comes to sustaining success in high level college football, one of the biggest challenges is staff continuity.
Teams win championships, and their staff gets plucked by other schools for promotions. It’s just the way it goes. Coaches such as Urban Meyer and Nick Saban have said on repeat that cycle becomes one of the great hindrances to staying on top.
So far, Indiana’s 27-2 run under head coach Curt Cignetti has been met with the opposite. The Hoosiers will enter the 2026 season with the exact same positional coaches and coordinators who led the team in 2024.
But that’s not because the IU staff has gone unnoticed or unwanted.
Clearly one of the more in demand members of the IU staff has been defensive coordinator Bryant Haines.
Cignetti is on the record stating other schools were attempting to hire Haines over the last few months. But the IU head coach has also gone out of his way to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Haines has signed multiple new deals with Indiana since coming with Cignetti from JMU in 2024. The latest contract, announced in December, will pay him more than $3 million on average per year and make him one of the highest-paid assistant coaches in college football.
Haines is well paid, but also recognizes he’s in his sweet spot at the moment.
“One of these days I might explore that option (of being a head coach),” Haines said earlier this month on The Zone. “I love defense. I love Xs and Os. I love the board. I love film. When you put that head coach set on things change, and I don’t want to get pulled away from what I’m passionate about.”
Haines is making significantly more as a coordinator at Indiana than he would as a head coach of a lower level program.
And with Cignetti, Haines is given a lot of autonomy to run the defense, and the flexibility to not spend 18 hours at the facilities every day.
“I appreciate that Bryant recognizes he has a really good situation,” Cignetti said this week on the Always College Football podcast.
“I don’t mess with him. He’s the head coach of the defense and I try to create an office environment where these guys can get their work done and get out of here.
“And he’s a football guy. He doesn’t really have a burning desire to be a head football coach right now. He likes being the defensive coordinator. We’re coming off a national championship run and we’ve been really successful since he’s been the coordinator and where else would you go collegiately, right? Is the NFL a dream one day? It could be, I guess. Got him another year. Fired up about that.”
Haines was announced as the recipient of the 2025 Broyles Award earlier this month. The award goes to the best assistant coach in college football.
For the second year in a row, Haines orchestrated one of the best defensive units in the sport.
Despite playing the No. 10 most difficult strength of schedule, nationally Indiana was No. 2 in scoring defense (11.7 ppg), No. 2 in rushing defense (77.19 ypg), No. 24 in passing defense (188.8 ypg), and No. 4 in total defense (266.0 ypg).
IU was No. 3 with 30 turnovers created in 2025, No. 1 with 129 tackles for loss, No. 2 with 46 sacks, No. 8 in opponent third down conversions (30.1%), and No. 2 in opponent red zone touchdown percentage (37%).
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