MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — There was an evening last fall when Indiana safeties coach Ola Adams made an in-person appearance on a local radio show. At that point in the season, which was the program’s first under head coach Curt Cignetti, the Hoosiers were still unbeaten, still floating through an unthinkable fever dream for the losingest program in Division I history. Back then, nobody knew that Indiana’s inaugural trip to the College Football Playoff was little more than a precursor to the mechanized domination on display this season, an undefeated marauding that could culminate with the No. 1 team’s coronation in the national title game on Monday night.
When Adams finished the interview, an older woman in the audience gently grabbed his arm and pulled him off to the side. She was, in Adams’ best guess, well into her 70s or older. And she wanted to thank him for what she described as “the most fun I’ve ever had” across a lifetime of rooting for the Hoosiers.
“That was my moment of being like, wow, this is pretty special, you know?” Adams told me. “Let me take a step back and kind of enjoy this a little bit. You also realize that you’re not just playing for yourself. You’re not just playing for the team. But there’s people that are supporting you, [and] we’re making their lives higher as effectively. It’s fairly cool, you recognize, to sort of see the assist of the city. I really feel like all people is somewhat bit happier and all people has one thing to look ahead to as a result of, prior to now, they’ve simply felt like they by no means had that.”
Definitely not in a soccer sense, which makes the giddiness of a lady whose Hoosier fandom has spanned at the very least three males’s faculty basketball nationwide championships, if no more, pretty instructive. What Cignetti and the Hoosiers are doing amid this mind-twisting, landscape-altering run was presumed not possible at a hoops-first utopia: They’ve erased decade upon decade of gridiron indifference and changed it with a hysteria funneled from the hardwood of Meeting Corridor, the place legendary coach Bob Knight as soon as prowled.
Given the financials that are actually affixed to Cignetti’s regime — each when it comes to the numerous assets dedicated to him by Indiana and the eye-bulging sums his on-field success has generated for the college — it’s now more and more troublesome to view Indiana as something aside from a soccer faculty.
Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti hoists the George P. Crumbley Trophy after defeating Oregon within the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. (Picture by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Pictures)
Let’s begin with the cash. After Penn State fired head coach James Franklin in mid-October, at which level rumors about Cignetti as a possible alternative started to swirl, Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson wanted lower than per week to unveil a glowing new contract that spans eight years and contains a median annual wage of $11.6 million. A clause in Cignetti’s deal additionally necessitates a “good religion market evaluate” following the nationwide championship sport, provided that the Hoosiers superior to at the very least the CFP semifinals. Indiana is now required to tweak or amend his contract and be certain that he stays among the many sport’s three highest-paid coaches. Georgia’s Kirby Good and Ohio State’s Ryan Day had been already incomes greater than Cignetti, and new LSU head coach Lane Kiffin joined them by signing a seven-year deal value $13 million yearly final month.
With employees continuity taking part in an integral position in Cignetti’s success throughout head-coaching tenures at IUP, Elon, James Madison and Indiana, he prioritized rewarding coordinators Bryant Haines (protection) and Mike Shanahan (offense) with hefty raises, too. The previous will now earn $3 million for the 2026 season, successfully aligning him with the highest-paid defensive coordinators within the nation, whereas the latter will earn $2.4 million within the first 12 months of his deal. Their annual compensation charges, which embody further raises from the aforementioned figures, now exceed the wage of each Indiana soccer head coach till Cignetti’s predecessor, Tom Allen, was bumped to $3.77 million in 2020. That was additionally the primary time an Indiana soccer coach commanded a wage exceeding that of the lads’s basketball coach, in keeping with the USA Immediately coaches wage database.
“It is night time and day,” Haines stated when requested about this system’s evolution since his lone season as a Hoosiers’ graduate assistant in 2012. “And I don’t say that frivolously. It didn’t imply something to be an Indiana soccer participant [when I was] a GA right here. It did not imply something to be a GA. It did not imply something to be a coach. It was a program that was nonetheless attempting to get out of the mud.”
As a result of Haines’ prior expertise at Indiana got here throughout a stretch when basketball was nonetheless king — despite the fact that the Hoosiers haven’t reached a Ultimate 4 since 2002 — he’s amongst a handful of Indiana staffers uniquely positioned to explain this system’s renaissance by drawing on expertise from hoops-first establishments. Adams, the safeties coach, spent seven seasons at Villanova from 2015-21, a stretch that included two basketball nationwide championships below former coach Jay Wright. Cornerbacks coach Rod Ojong was a graduate assistant at North Carolina when former coach Roy Williams gained all of it in 2017. And quarterbacks coach Chandler Whitmer was a participant at UConn in 2014 when each the lads’s and ladies’s basketball packages captured nationwide titles in the identical season, a feat additionally they achieved 10 years earlier.
Every of them described various ranges of apathy, or at the very least disinterest, from fan bases that had been targeted largely on different sports activities — all whereas attempting “to shift it,” as Ojong advised me, regardless of how unlikely that risk appeared.
“Villanova gained a nationwide championship in soccer,” Adams advised me. “But it surely’s FCS soccer. So regardless of how good you bought there, it simply wasn’t equal to what basketball may attain. When you win a nationwide championship [at Indiana] it’s equal taking part in, as a result of that is the largest, highest degree of soccer. So it’s simply been wonderful to sort of come right here and sort of remodel the place and sort of redefine the tradition.”
“Simply the joy that [winning basketball] dropped at campus and clearly to the fan base was nice,” Whitmer advised me. “After which, so far as translating that to Indiana, I do know traditionally that’s what it’s been right here. However my time was simply this 12 months, so all I do know it as is a soccer faculty. Simply having that have at UConn, yeah, it sort of exhibits you that. But it surely’s sort of cool to have or not it’s the soccer workforce now to play in a nationwide championship.”
Legions of Indiana devoted appear to agree. What number of instances throughout this 12 months’s CFP have the Hoosiers benefitted from veritable house atmospheres at what had been speculated to be impartial websites as a result of Indiana followers invaded one stadium after one other? What number of instances have broadcasters, analysts and writers talked about that Indiana has the nation’s largest dwelling alumni base at greater than 805,000 worldwide, all however inviting them to donate funds? How a lot air time has been devoured up by new Indiana tremendous donor Mark Cuban — the previous principal proprietor of the Dallas Mavericks and a proud Indiana alum — throughout on-field celebrations every time the Hoosiers win the largest sport in program historical past?
Indiana alumni Mark Cuban celebrates with QB Alberto Mendoza #16 after the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. (Picture by CFP/Getty Pictures)
All of it has translated to file highs for Indiana in areas like ticket income, fundraising, candidates and scholar enrollment, in keeping with the “Huddle Up” e-newsletter written by Joe Pompliano. The true financial impression of what Cignetti has achieved in lower than two full seasons is staggering, radiating from the athletic division to the college at massive, with one other big surge more likely to come if the Hoosiers defeat No. 10 Miami at Exhausting Rock Stadium on Monday night time.
“I at all times noticed the worth on this place,” Haines advised me. “I knew that it may take off. I bear in mind telling Coach Cignetti when he first pulled me in his workplace and [the move to Indiana] was about to go down, I stated, ‘That place can take off.’ I really believed that. To see that it truly did has been unbelievable.”
Basketball would possibly outline the establishment’s previous, however that sport is now not the gateway to Indiana’s future. The Hoosiers have entered a stratosphere that Knight may by no means think about and one which solely trendy faculty soccer can present.
Michael Cohen covers faculty soccer and faculty basketball for FOX Sports activities. Comply with him at @Michael_Cohen13.
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