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To appreciate Indiana's unlikely rise, start with Curt Cignetti phone call to Kurtis Rourke
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- To appreciate Indiana's unlikely rise, start with Curt Cignetti phone call to Kurtis Rourke
Indiana forged its football revolution in the simplest fashion.
A struggling program hired a winning coach.
A winning coach found his quarterback.
Basic in its formation, extraordinary in its effect.
To call what Indiana's first-year coach Curt Cignetti and transfer quarterback Kurtis Rourke teamed up to achieve a revival would be misleading. To revive something, it had to previously exist.
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Indiana never existed like this, 10-0 while the temperature drops and the leaves fall, pegged No. 5 in the College Football Playoff rankings , with a shot at the Big Ten championship.
Skeptics fairly question Indiana's strength of schedule, but there can be no arguing these facts: The Hoosiers will enter Saturday's game against No. 2 Ohio State with a chance to increase their program-record season win total, and if they win in Columbus, that signals they can win the whole darn thing.
If you call this the biggest game in Indiana football history, you wouldn't be accused of hyperbole.
"In my time covering the program, it's by far the most significant (game)," said longtime sportswriter Pete DiPrimio . His coverage of the Hoosiers spans nearly 40 years and dates to 1988. He currently writes for Indiana's athletic department.
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"This is remarkable," DiPrimio added. "In so many ways, it's amazing."
It started with a coach calling a quarterback.
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Why Kurtis Rouke googled Curt Cignetti
Thirteen transfers followed Cignetti from James Madison to Indiana as part of a massive roster overhaul. Those ex- Dukes brought to Indiana a winning culture. They'd helped James Madison win 11 games last season.
Cignetti still needed a quarterback.
He found one from Ohio – the Bobcats, not the Buckeyes .
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Rourke, an overlooked recruit from Ontario, Canada , secured Ohio as his only Division I offer as a prep prospect. Rourke's brother, Nathan, previously quarterbacked the Bobcats.
Rourke's 16-6 record in his final two seasons as Ohio's starter appealed to Cignetti, whose portal preference centers on starters who know what it takes to win, rather than talented backups who lack game reps.
Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke (9) throws the ball UCLA Bruins during the first half at the Rose Bowl.
With Rourke in the portal, Cignetti phoned a quarterback nicknamed "The Maple Missile" at Ohio.
"Everything he was saying on the phone, I was like, 'Wow, that's really impressive,'" Rourke said recently on "The Jim Rome Show."
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Neither Cignetti nor Rourke were household names last winter, and Rourke questioned whether Cignetti's credentials might be too good to be true.
A good quarterback does his homework, so Rourke fact-checked Cignetti's résumé.
In doing so, Rourke followed the advice Cignetti would later state during an Indiana news conference, when the coach famously said: "I win. Google me."
"I did Google him," Rourke said on "Jim Rome."
Rourke's research revealed a coach who's never had a losing record in his now 14 seasons as a head coach, from Division II to the Championship Subdivision to the Bowl Subdivision. Cignetti brought Indiana some bravado, too.
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While addressing Indiana fans during a basketball game last December, a day after his hire, Cignetti uncorked a zinger.
"I've never taken a backseat to anybody and don't plan on starting now," Cignetti said, setting up a punch line that set the crowd roaring. "Purdue sucks, and so do Michigan and Ohio State."
You said it, coach. Now, prove it.
Can Ohio State avoid another dark day?
The Buckeyes don't lose to Indiana. They just don't.
We're talking about The Ohio State University against a basketball school.
After Earle Bruce's Buckeyes lost to Indiana in 1987, the school's first loss to the Hoosiers in 36 years, Bruce dubbed it " the darkest day in Ohio State football " from his purview, anyway.
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The brass agreed. Ohio State fired Bruce a month later.
No pressure, Ryan Day.
Since Indiana tied the Buckeyes in 1990, Ohio State ripped off 29 consecutive victories in this series, most of them blowouts.
Curt Cignetti makes Indiana sustained success possible
The Hoosiers tasted fleeting success before now.
Indiana fans who've gone gray at the temples perhaps recall the 1967 Hoosiers sharing the Big Ten crown and being No. 4 in the final AP poll before losing the Rose Bowl to Southern California to finish 9-2.
A dozen years later, Lee Corso coached the Hoosiers to a Holiday Bowl victory to cap an eight-win season remembered fondly by Indiana fans of a certain generation.
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Eight wins became a perpetual ceiling. Before the 2019 season, an Indiana fan site spawned a catchy hashtag: #9WINDIANA.
As in, could Tom Allen's Hoosiers reach rare air with nine victories? They hadn't reached nine victories since 1967.
The 2019 Hoosiers came up two points short of a ninth win, finished 8-5, then went 6-2 and rose as high as No. 7 in the coaches poll in the following season shortened by COVID-19, before the bottom dropped out.
NIL and immediate eligibility for transfers changed college football's playbook for engineering a turnaround. Used to be, new coaches asked for a runway long enough to stack recruiting classes and gradually build steam. Now, a portal raid makes microwaved rejuvenation possible.
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Peep Deion Sanders , whose transfer-laden Colorado Buffaloes are 8-2 and in playoff contention, two years after Colorado went 1-11.
No longer is the playoff exclusive to blue bloods, either. Cincinnati qualified for the four-team playoff in 2021. TCU played for the national championship two seasons ago. Washington reached the title game last season.
With a base level of administration support, a little NIL pocket change, a solid coach, effective transfer evaluation, and an accommodating schedule, programs from Indiana to SMU to Arizona State storm into playoff contention.
The question becomes: Is the success sustainable, or a microwaved meal that soon will leave the program hungry again?
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Sonny Dykes melded 14 transfers before TCU's 2022 season with a veteran starting quarterback he inherited, Max Duggan , and star wide receiver Quentin Johnston . TCU won 13 games in that first season for Dykes, a year-over-year improvement of eight victories. The uprising didn't last. TCU has totaled 11 victories in the two seasons since that magical 2022 run.
Florida State won 13 games last season. Then came a mass exodus, and Mike Norvell's next portal haul flopped. The Seminoles collapsed.
Already, Cignetti increased Indiana's win total by seven. His lineup is loaded with seniors, most of them transfers. Indiana's current recruiting class ranks 13th in the 18-team Big Ten.
Could Indiana count on another portal plunder?
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The ex-Dukes who transferred to Indiana knew Cignetti's systems. They understood his culture. That's a leg up.
Winning is now possible at places like Indiana, but it's still harder to sustain success than at places like Ohio State, where national top-five recruiting classes are a rite of winter.
But, with Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan State down, and Michigan still in transition after Jim Harbaugh's departure, this would seem like an opportunistic window for a Big Ten program to climb the ladder and perch on a higher rung.
Indiana understands Cignetti at least gives it a chance at a winning hand. The Hoosiers doubled his pay by awarding him an eight-year, $72 million contract last week.
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By now, nobody needs to Google Cignetti to know, he wins.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer . Subscribe to read all of his columns.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Curt Cignetti phoned Kurtis Rourke reversing Indiana football fortunes
