Indiana football’s success this season invigorated the program’s alumni.
Flocks of former IU players from various eras traveled to Pasadena, Atlanta, and Miami to watch the Hoosiers throughout their national championship run. Those alums had a different perspective of Curt Cignetti’s team scaling the mountaintop of college football. They wore the same IU uniform, played in the same stadium, but most never came close to reaching these sorts of heights. Alums watched with pride and awe as the same program they represented made history.
Some more recent alums couldn’t help but feel like they narrowly missed out on being a part of something special. Bryant Fitzgerald, who played safety at IU from 2017-22 for head coach Tom Allen, shared that sentiment with The Daily Hoosier in a phone interview during the week ahead of the National Championship Game.
“I always tell my mom, we always joke, I’m like, ‘Man, I wish I was born three years later so I could be a part of this Curt Cignetti train,'” Fitzgerald told TDH. “No offense to coach Allen, one of my favorite coaches of all-time to play for. I would run through a wall for that man. … But I will say that I would have loved to play for coach Cignetti, though. I love his mindset, and everything he stands for, for a head coach. I love him.”
Along with a job at FedEx, Fitzgerald is currently coaching at Avon High in Indianapolis, his alma mater.
The former safety been back to Bloomington several times the last two years, including for the Washington game in 2024 when IU hosted ESPN’s College GameDay. He called it refreshing to see Cignetti’s Hoosiers break through the way many thought Allen had momentum to do while he was there.
But Fitzgerald, in his role with Avon, gets another vantage point of Indiana’s rise. He’s witnessed, first-hand, the way IU’s success under Cignetti is impacting recruiting and the way high school players view the program.
“It’s not now, ‘What can I do to get an offer?’ It’s, ‘What can I do to get an offer from IU?’ And that’s really never ever really been the standard,” Fitzgerald told TDH. “They’re all asking, like, ‘How can I get an offer from IU? Do you have coaches there that I can talk to you? Is there connections you can put me on?’ So like now, kids are wanting to stay in state, versus going to the Michigans, the Ohio States, and all the other schools that surround us. It’s definitely a good sign that coach Cignetti’s starting to change the mindset around for the Indiana recruits.”
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