Do you believe in miracles?
Indiana is 10-0…in football. That’s unprecedented territory for the Hoosiers and first-year head coach Curt Cignetti. They cracked the top five in both the AP Poll and the College Football Playoff rankings this week.
For a program with a losing all-time record and no conference titles since 1967, this rapid turnaround has become the story of the season in college football. For younger Arkansas football fans, it may remind of a brief shining moment in the sun when Arkansas too cracked the Top 5 in November before dark clouds came crashing back in thanks to LSU.
Some felt like Arkansas could not return to such a state in this post-NIL landscape, but Indiana seems like a blueprint and a sign of hope for future successes in the post-realignment world.
As the glory days of 2010-11 under Bobby Petrino continue to recede farther into the horizon in the rearview mirror, some Arkansas football fans feel like getting back into that Top 12 national ranking by season’s end is ever more difficult.
The conference is too tough, so many say. Texas and Oklahoma joining this fall have made the long-awaited return even harder, they continue.
But the Big Ten in recent years has been every bit as competitive as the SEC, and has also taken in historic programs such as USC and Washington. The current No. 1 team in the nation, the Oregon Ducks, are among those new members.
Given what Indiana has been able to accomplish under Cignetti, it’s worth exploring whether Arkansas could do the same thing one day.
Cignetti’s Remarkable Turnaround of Indiana Football
Simply put, Indiana is a basketball school that hadn’t done much of anything in football since the 1960s. Usually one of the doormat programs of the Big Ten, the Hoosiers have finished the season ranked in the AP Poll just once since 1988 – and that was the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign.
They were probably most known for the talent they were able to produce for another program – in the form of Indiana-to-Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr.
Cignetti entered his new position with a lot of bravado, even though this was his first time coaching in the Power Four. In fact, he had just two seasons of FBS experience under his belt at James Madison.
But hey, confidence sells, and Cignetti has it in boatloads. He closed out his introductory press conference with a zinger that went ultra-viral when he was asked what his pitch was to potential recruits.
“It’s pretty simple, I win…Google me.”
He wasn’t lying. The grizzled 63-year-old has compiled a 129-35 career record, mostly in the D-II and FCS ranks. He seamlessly guided James Madison through its elevation to the FBS ranks, leading the Dukes to 8-3 and 11-1 records to close out his five-year tenure before taking the Indiana job.
Anything You Can Do, I (Should Be Able To) Do Better
The Hoosiers’ roster was in need of a pretty dramatic facelift upon his arrival. Sure enough, Cignetti brought in a whopping 48 newcomers – 17 high schoolers and 31 transfers, including 14 who followed him from JMU and just six from Power Four programs. Only two of those 31 transfers were rated as four stars by 247Sports.
That makes the coaching job Cignetti’s done even more impressive. It’s also a parallel to some recent comments from Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman when comparing his roster to that of Ole Miss.
“We don’t have the money that a lot of the other schools do,” Pittman said. “We went Blue Light special a little bit with our O-line. From what I understand, they went Louis Vuitton over there.”
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin used the Rebels’ extensive NIL funding to field the nation’s top transfer class. Cignetti’s budget, however, seemed to align more with Pittman and the K-Mart clearance aisle. And yet, his Hoosiers are 10-0, proving there’s more than one way to skin a cat in the NIL landscape.
Money has been a consistent complaint for Pittman as the Arkansas Edge collective lags behind its peers, but Indiana is succeeding in a power conference with neither prestige nor a loaded wallet.
And here lies the code that Arkansas needs to crack – winning comes first, then the cash can flow.
Arkansas Edge Has its Priorities Backwards
The job of an athletic director in modern college sports is to act as the program’s chief fundraiser, and that’s exactly what Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek has been doing lately. At the Little Rock Touchdown Club in September, he spoke candidly about where Arkansas’ NIL situation was at compared to its SEC peers.
“Ole Miss has about 5,000 members in their football collective,” he said. “We have about 1,000 in our football collective right now.”
Catching up to the rest of the playing field has been a priority for the program this fall, with Arkansas Edge implementing a “Drive for 5” initiative to try and reach 5,000 members. The minimum donation level was also dropped from $25 per month to a more accessible $10 rate.
But Yurachek and the revolving door of Arkansas Edge directors seem to have this whole thing backwards, with recent comments from Yurachek and Pittman seeming to put the blame on the fans’ lack of financial contribution for the team’s lack of winning.
In reality, that order is reversed. Win first, and then you get the money. Sure enough, Indiana’s NIL collective, Hoosier Connect, has raised six times the amount of money it did a year ago, according to executive director Tyler Harris.
Fans aren’t going to donate to what they view as a mediocre product. As you heard a million times during election season, money’s tight these days. Fans can’t afford to just throw money into the wind; you’ve got to prove that you’re putting a worthwhile product on the field.
And let me tell you, getting 63 points dropped on your head in a game that was all but over midway through the second quarter is not the way to do that.
Indiana Brass Gets It
In this aspect, Arkansas can once again take notes from how Indiana football is rolling this year. Harris said it perfectly.
“All the Indiana fans have scar tissue. The excitement is one thing. Delivering it like [Cignetti] has is another.”
Arkansas fans used to the “Heartbreak Hogs” moniker can understand that scar tissue comment completely. And Harris hits the nail on the head that bringing in NIL contributions is a two-step game – generate excitement, and deliver results.
Cignetti has done both, from his introductory press conference to his captivation of a great relationship with the student body. Prior to Indiana’s home game against Maryland earlier this season, he personally sent out an email to students urging them to show up loud and proud.
“It’s been 57 years since IU Football started a season 5-0, but we have a chance to do it Saturday,” he said. “The tailgates can wait. The parties can wait. If you need to study, that can wait too.”
Building that sort of connection with the fanbase is key to generating excitement, and Cignetti has followed up on it by delivering a 10-0 start and win against national champion Michigan the last time out.
Arkansas, unfortunately, has done neither. Pittman’s rhetoric about a “proud damn state” and his relatable personality goes a long way at making him a likable figure in the fanbase, but there’s other things that go into generating excitement.
His usual postgame pressers after losses frequently feature the same remarks about Arkansas getting “out-physicaled” and “out-coached,” which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence – or excitement – for fans. The Head Hog certainly delivered with an upset victory against Tennessee, but recent blowout losses against LSU and Ole Miss have signaled a return to the status quo.
You can’t blame your blowout home losses on a lack of funding, because you’re not going to get funding when you’re getting blown out at home. There’s a bit of a disconnect between the fanbase and the university’s brass right now that seems to be slowing down the Razorbacks’ progress.
So it should really come as no surprise that Indiana is so far ahead of Arkansas right now – even though history suggests the Hogs have no business being behind the Hoosiers.
Even more damning is the fact that Arkansas’ transfer portal class actually ranked above Indiana’s this offseason. And yet the Hogs are 5-4, and the Hoosiers are 10-0. Cignetti has accomplished in his first year with a bottom feeder program what no coach has been able to do yet with Arkansas in the SEC – win the first 10 games of a season.
Realignment Opened Unintended Doors for Smaller Fish in the Sea
There is still one important piece of context that needs to be mentioned, and that’s the strength of schedule gap. Indiana has yet to face a ranked team this season, while Arkansas has had quite the gauntlet with No. 24 Texas A&M, No. 4 Tennessee, No. 8 LSU and No. 19 Ole Miss. The Hogs’ strength of schedule ranks 25th in ESPN’s FPI, while Indiana comes in at 100th.
When college football’s big-wig executives decided to realign the conferences, capsizing the Pac-12 to form the Power Four, the thinking was that the rich would only get richer. Especially in the new era of NIL, which allows prestigious programs with huge fundraising collectives to spend mountains of cash building loaded rosters. Add that into the lucrative TV deals for all parties involved, and it’s a pretty sweet deal for the sport’s blue bloods.
But rather than furthering the footballing oligarchy, an unintended consequence of realignment has actually allowed the little guys to emerge as true contenders. The new power conferences are absolutely massive – the Big Ten and ACC have 18 teams, and the SEC and Big 12 have 16 members.
But there are only 12 games on the football calendar, with eight or nine of those being in conference play. That’s led to a bit of dilution to strengths of schedules around the country, as it’s now possible to play through a campaign without having to come in contact with any conference heavyweights.
Arkansas saw this firsthand in 2024, as it finally got to avoid playing Alabama for the first time since 1991. The Hoosiers have also been fortunate in this regard. Even if they lose to No. 2 Ohio State next week, they’ve got a good shot at making the College Football Playoff at 11-1 without any top 25 wins.
That’s not to completely dog on Indiana’s strength of record, as they’ve won nine of their 10 games by 14 points or more. They also can’t help the fact that two of their marquee opponents in Michigan and Washington, who both played for the national title last year, have flopped this season and ended up outside the top 25.
It should also paint a hopeful picture for Arkansas football fans. The Hogs already get to avoid Georgia and Alabama this year and next season. All that remains is for a team like Texas or LSU to have a down year, and all of a sudden the Hogs have a schedule with 10 winnable games on it.
We already know it’s possible in the SEC after Missouri’s dream season last year, when it went 10-2 in the regular season and capped it off with a Cotton Bowl win over Ohio State. That Tiger team was propelled not by blue-chip talent, but by a three-star quarterback in Brady Cook and a D-II transfer running back in Cody Schrader.
Of course, capitalizing on those opportunities is a different story. Sure, Arkansas had its blips of excitement over the decades – a ‘98 fumble here, a 2010 and 2021 nearly-beat Bama there – but that doesn’t carry over to getting it done and accomplishing a true dream season. Indiana’s had the fortune of a kind schedule this year, but the Hoosiers have also gone out there and taken care of business every week – and that’s no small feat.
Cignetti and Indiana have laid a blueprint – or a redprint, perhaps – for Arkansas football to achieve a dream season of its own in the newly-expanded SEC – generating excitement, delivering results on the field, and taking advantage of winnable games on the calendar.
Whether Arkansas can implement that plan from 2025 onwards – either with Pittman or his eventual successor – will require plenty of on-field improvements and administrative reckoning.
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How Curt Cignetti is changing the culture at Indiana:
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