Curt Cignetti remembers the exact moment when everything changed.
With his Hoosiers ranked in the top-5 and 10-0 on the season, Cignetti had led IU to its greatest start in program history — and right into harm’s way.
You see, they were disrupting the natural order of college football.
You’re adorable Indiana, but don’t you dare harm our traditional powers.
“The noise got real, real loud going into the Ohio State game,” Cignetti said yesterday at Big Ten media day. “We went from being the darling story of college football to being like the enemy, the hunted. Like these two fronts, the biggest college reporting venue in the world, and a big conference down south, you’re getting it from both sides. Like, ‘They better play good or they’re out.’”
Of course many prominent voices did try to argue that an 11-1 Big Ten team should not make the first 12-team College Football Playoff.
But the CFP Committee were the adults in the room. They saw several dominant wins, and no bad losses. There was no chance an 11-1 Big Ten team was going to be left out.
The same could not be said for three-loss SEC teams you were supposed to believe were more CFP-deserving than IU, like Alabama, who lost to Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, who lost to Kentucky, and South Carolina, who escaped Old Dominion at home by four points.
Those three SEC teams had one thing in common with Indiana in 2024 — three easy nonconference games. Just like the Hoosiers, all three of Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina played three non-Power 4 opponents in 2024.
With that in mind, and now turning our attention to 2025, Indiana is decidedly still not the darling story of college football.
Yesterday, after listening to pundits criticize his schedule for weeks, Cignetti responded to a question about his team’s approach to nonconference scheduling.
And he stated a fact: By moving to three nonconference games against non-Power 4 teams every season, Indiana was adopting the SEC scheduling model.
Of course those same people who turned on Indiana ahead of the Ohio State game last November erupted in response to this comment by Cignetti.
National headlines around the country claimed some variation of “Cignetti takes shot at SEC,” when what they should have said is “Cignetti deals facts on SEC.”
Here’s the one thing you need to know. And it’s a pretty simple concept. Are you ready?
Nine is greater than eight.
Yep, I know. That’s a lot to process. I’ll wait while you catch your breath.
Yes, nine is greater than eight. The Big Ten plays nine conference games, and the SEC plays eight. So even if Indiana plays no Power 4 nonconference games and an SEC team plays one, they both still play, wait for it, NINE Power 4 games.
Here are some highly complex formulas to explain this concept. And no, I didn’t promise you there’d be no math:
9+0 = 9
8+1 = 9
Still with me?
And now here’s where Cignetti’s comment and scheduling plan becomes even less controversial: Playing nine Power 4 games is the MAJORITY approach in the aggregate across the SEC and Big Ten.
This year, in total, 19 of the 34 teams in the Big Ten and SEC play NINE games against Power 4 opponents. Indiana is one of those teams. So IU’s “controversial” scheduling approach is what more than half of the SEC and Big Ten are doing.
And 13 of those 19 teams playing nine Power 4 opponents this year are from, you guessed it, the SEC.
So nine Power 4 games very much IS the SEC’s approach to scheduling. There’s nothing controversial about Cignetti’s comment at all. Rather, decades of delusional grandeur has left many folks in the South unable to comprehend basic realities.
Indiana would be foolish to schedule a tenth Power 4 opponent as long as the SEC is generally playing nine. Same goes for the teams in the Big Ten currently playing ten — they are foolish. At least any teams like IU, that have legitimate CFP aspirations (so not you Barry Odom and Purdue).
Indiana has to live in a world where people argue with straight faces that teams with two more losses than them are more CFP worthy. Their margin for error is lower.
The SEC had a dirty little trick. They play nine Power 4 games, while mocking you for only playing nine Power 4 games.
Yesterday, the SEC was exposed.
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