IU football is off and running.
The Hoosiers opened fall camp this week ahead of a highly-anticipated 2025 season. Fan interest and national media attention are as high as ever surrounding Indiana’s program after a historic 2024 season that saw the team shock the sport and reach the College Football Playoff for the first time.
Curt Cignetti’s group has a lot of potential entering this year. IU has a good amount of returning production across the roster, and the coaching staff did well to plug various holes in the transfer portal.
Cignetti met with local media on Wednesday after the Hoosiers wrapped up their first practice of preseason. Here are a few key points he discussed.
Turning the page
Cignetti, through his comments at Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas and after Wednesday’s practice, has made clear that the 2025 Hoosiers are a new team. This isn’t a continuation of 2024. This IU team enters this season with a blank slate.
The Hoosiers do have a strong level of continuity that works in their favor. Cignetti lost just one coach from his staff last year, quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri. It’s uncommon for a team as successful as IU was last year to have such little coaching turnover.
IU also has a lot of key returning players like defensive end Mikail Kamara, linebacker Aiden Fisher, cornerback D’Angelo Ponds, safety Amare Ferrell, wide receivers Elijah Sarratt and Omar Cooper Jr., and more. This preseason is much different than last year’s, where the team was more unknown and had more question marks going into the season.
But Cignetti is viewing this fall camp and this team the same as he’s approached all of his teams at this time of year.
“Well, to me every year you’ve got to start over regardless of how long your tenure has been or what your record was the previous year. You always start at ground zero and build it from the foundation up,” Cignetti said. “The expectation level, you know, on the outside, some of the noise, is a little different, but I think one of the things we really got to do a great job of is staying focused on the things that affect positive development individually and collectively and kind of block all the other stuff out.
Like I’ve said before, the season is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. You’ve got to be able to handle success, failure, overcome obstacles, and you have to do that during the game too, good game, bad game. You have to be able to compartmentalize, rip off the rearview mirror, and play the next play. To me it’s more of the same than different.”
Eyes on Old Dominion
The Hoosiers are still over three weeks away from game week ahead of Old Dominion, but Cignetti is well aware of the first hurdle they’ll face.
Fall camp is generally more about internal preparation, evaluation, and development than opponent-specific work. But Cignetti has already brought up the Monarchs in team meetings. He’s familiar with ODU from his time at James Madison — his Dukes went 2-0 in their two matchups against Old Dominion in 2022 and 2023.
“I addressed Old Dominion in the team meeting, the first team meeting, because these Sun Belt teams are very capable,” Cignetti said. “They have a history of knocking off P4, or in the past they were called FBS teams. We (JMU) beat Virginia. Marshall beat Notre Dame. App State beat A&M. Louisiana beat Mississippi State and on and on and on. They’re good teams. When you play them early in the year when they’re healthy and they’re at full strength, they’re especially dangerous.”
Old Dominion’s spread offense could be a good early test for Indiana’s defense. Cignetti is clearly ensuring the Hoosiers won’t overlook their first opponent.
Adjusting to life at IU
Cignetti, as head coach of a Big Ten football program and the highest-paid state employee in Indiana, is already a recognizable public figure.
He got used to the celebrity aspect of his role quickly, especially as the Hoosiers rolled through their huge 2024 season. He knows he’ll usually get recognized and stopped by fans if he’s spotted out in public. Cignetti knows that’s part of the job, and he knows how quickly things can change if his team’s on-field results go downhill.
A year later, not much has changed in that regard for Cignetti. He has grown more comfortable in Bloomington, though.
“I think what’s changed the most besides the familiarity with all the people in town — and it’s a great town, great college town — is everything in my house works now. We bought a house from a guy named Tom Martin, who was friends with Bobby Knight, and it had a lot of toys in it. It took my wife about a year to get everything to work — not that he neglected it, because he didn’t,” Cignetti said. “We have a lot of new faces on the football team, too. That’s changed, but I think that’s most people across the country now.”
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