Curt Cignetti reshaped the college football landscape with Indiana’s 2025 championship, proving that titles aren’t only for programs loaded with top-five recruiting classes and five-star players. Cignetti and his exceptional roster consistently rose to every challenge.
Urban Meyer Shares Honest Take on Curt Cignetti’s Success at Indiana
Cignetti led Indiana to the pinnacle of college football in January, finishing the season 16-0 and claiming the national championship. However, neither Indiana nor Cignetti show any signs of slowing down, and his coaching brilliance continues to earn heavy praise, including from former college football head coach Urban Meyer.
“That’s the greatest coaching job I have ever witnessed in my lifetime,” Meyer said in his “The Triple Option” podcast on Tuesday. “And it’s not just him. He has two coordinators with him for nine years, and you know it, Pete Carroll went through it, Nick Saban went through it, I went through it, when you start losing your coaches. Because those guys should be head coaches for what they’ve done.”
“If they’re not Mike Shanahan and then Bryant Haines, the defensive coordinator, who by the way worked for me at Ohio State, those guys what they did, I’m telling you the best coaching job.”
Cignetti’s success also comes from his quarterback decisions. The Hoosiers had Kurtis Rourke as the starter in 2024, leading the team to an 11-2 record that season. After Rourke left for the NFL, Indiana added California transfer Fernando Mendoza for the 2025 season, who led the Hoosiers to the National Championship and became the first player in Indiana history to win the Heisman Trophy.
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Cignetti’s next quarterback bet for the 2026 season is TCU transfer Josh Hoover. On3 ranked Hoover as the No. 5 quarterback ahead of the upcoming season, and analyst Ari Wasserman had a pointed response to this:
“We haven’t seen Hoover play at Indiana yet. He came into the starting spot at Indiana with a year or two of starting experience in college… If you wanted to make a case for top three for Hoover just based on speculation, I think I can get behind that, because of how I feel about feelings and like the thought of what can be.”
“But what makes this year’s list easier, and what makes it harder to rank Hoover in the top three is because there’s a bunch of players, unlike last year, that are coming into the season with proven production value.”
Hoover ranked No. 21 nationally in PFSN’s College Football QBi Metric with an 86.0 score, and certainly has the ability to produce big numbers in a system that just won a national championship. He passed for 3,472 yards, 29 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions last season before choosing to transfer before TCU’s trip to the Horned Frogs’ Alamo Bowl.
