How Curt Cignetti built Indiana’s national championship football roster

When Curt Cignetti arrived at Indiana he had a simple message.

He wins.

“Yeah it’s pretty simple, I win,” was that statement at his introductory press conference.

“Google me.”

The mantra has become part of Cignetti’s lore over the past two seasons, even becoming part of an upcoming bobblehead that features Cignetti not on the sideline, but at the press conference podium.

But over two years in charge at Indiana he has won, turning a team that finished 3-9 the year before he arrived into a team that went 11-2 in his first season, earning a spot in the College Football Playoff. Year two? That has Cignetti and Indiana on the cusp of the national championship, as they’ll clash with Miami in the title game.

How did Cignetti turn things around so quickly? Beyond getting his team to buy into his message, he overturned the entire roster with an emphasis on the transfer portal, but not in the way you might think.

The focus? Players with a track record of production, rather than yet-untapped potential.

The backbone of that initial transfer class, ahead of the 2024 campaign, was a core group of 13 players that followed Cignetti from James Madison to Indiana. Five of those players — Elijah Sarratt, Aiden Fisher, D’Angelo Ponds, Mikail Kamara and Kaelon Black — are all former Dukes who contributed in a big way during the 2025 season. Sarratt in particular stands out, a big-bodied receiver who has become a featured target for quarterback Fernando Mendoza.

More on him in a moment.

But that incoming 2024 transfer portal class of 31 players included veterans with proven production at the collegiate level, and was a collection of three-star prospects. Sarratt and quarterback Kurtis Rourke were rarities, as the four-stars among the group.

Mark Cuban, an Indiana alum and prominent supporter, saw the vision from Cignetti early in the process.

“As Cig has said, he wants performance, not potential, which is exactly what he focused on,” Cuban told CBS Sports. “He put together a team where players knew their roles coming in, a coaching staff that could take those experienced players and mold them quickly, and an organization that understood exactly how to get the pieces they needed.”

Then came the class of 2025, and 23 more players making the move to Indiana. Center Pat Coogan was a key addition, a four-star transfer coming over from Notre Dame.

As was Mendoza.

Mendoza is perhaps a true rarity in college football today, a quarterback who was a three-star recruit coming out of high school who initially committed to Yale, before flipping to California as interest from bigger schools started to blossom. Mendoza did not start until his midway through his redshirt freshman season, but after a strong first full year as a starter at California, he was ranked as the No. 4 quarterback in the transfer portal.

He chose Indiana — and Cignetti — with an eye toward the future.

“To have an offensive-minded coaching staff was extremely important for me and to get that development was really important for me.” Mendoza said earlier this fall.

“Because whenever I would talk to people — former coaches, mentors — they were like we really think you’re doing well but to take that next level and really get where you want to go . . . aka the NFL, you really need to be a bit more polished and more consistent. That was a big thing I was looking to accomplish at Indiana.”

Mendoza has garnered the headlines, but if you look up and down Indiana’s depth chart, that theme of “production over potential” shows up at each position. Running backs Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black, a pair of fifth-year players, have combined for nearly 80% of Indiana’s rushing workload. Hemby was a lead back at Maryland before joining the Hoosiers, while Black was one of the contributors who followed Cignetti from James Madison to Bloomington.

Up front Coogan and Drew Evans are the two transfers along the offensive line — Evans was a two-star recruit before signing at Wisconsin — while Carter Smith, Bray Lynch, and Adedamola Ajani are all three-star recruits signed by Indiana.

The wide receiver group, led by Sarratt, also features another transfer, E.J. Williams Jr. from Clemson. Charlie Becker and Omar Cooper both signed with Indiana as recruits, with Becker committing to the program ahead of Cignetti’s arrival. Tight end Riley Nowakowski is yet another transfer, who was used sparingly by the Badgers before finding a new home at Indiana.

On the defensive side of the ball, Indiana’s front seven is again dominated by transfers. Dominique Ratliff, Tyrique Tucker, Hosea Wheeler, and Mikail Kamara were all transfers that arrived via the portal, all of whom were listed as three-star prospects. Only Tyrone Burrus Jr., a freshman, signed with Indiana as a recruit. Standout linebackers Rolijah Hardy and Isaiah Jones represent two of the rare signees at Indiana — Hardy was a one-star recruit coming out of high school — but Aidan Fisher is one more of the players who started at James Madison before making the move to Indiana.

The player that might exemplify Indiana’s roster best might not be Mendoza, but rather safety Louis Moore. He started his collegiate journey at Navarro college, transferred to Indiana head of Cignetti’s arrival, then transferred to Ole Miss for one season, before returning to Bloomington for this year.

He will celebrate his 25th birthday days after the national championship game.

The result of all these veteran transfers? An older, experienced roster. Indiana’s depth chart features several players who are 22 years old or older, and their two-deep is filled with juniors and seniors.

“It’s a very veteran group,” said Coogan. “It’s a mature group. It’s a group that’s been around the block, played a lot of football, and a group that knows how to take (Cignetti’s) messages and put them on the field.”

“I feel like having veterans on the field makes our job easy because we have that sense to where we’ve been through it before,” said Hemby. “We kind of have that mentality where we don’t flinch. Being older, I think it does help us to know that we’ve been through it. We’re battle-tested. We play for one another. I feel like that really helps us to experience that grit feeling. That helps us to win those games.”

This group could also be the first to break the so-called “Blue-Chip Ratio.” Created over a decade ago by Bud Elliott, that axiom olds that to win a national title, a program needs to sign more four- and five-star recruits than two- and three-star players over the previous four recruiting classes.

Every team that has won a title since the creation of the “Blue-Chip Ratio” has met this threshold, dating back to Alabama in 2011.

Indiana’s veteran roster, build on production and experience over potential, could break the mold.