'Humble and Hungry': Indiana Isn't Settling Under Curt Cignetti

LAS VEGAS — In the immediate aftermath of Indiana’s season-ending loss to Notre Dame during the opening round of last year’s College Football Playoff, its lightning rod head coach, Curt Cignetti, trudged into the visiting media room at Notre Dame Stadium with hollow guts and wounded pride. 

For the better part of five months, Cignetti and his players had transformed into nationwide darlings while authoring one of the greatest turnarounds the sport has ever seen. But on this December evening in South Bend, as the 12-team format was unveiled for the first time, the Hoosiers endured a one-sided whipping. All that separated Cignetti & Co. from a more humiliating scoreline were two late touchdowns once the outcome had long been secured.  

"The hardest thing on a night like this is saying ‘goodbye’ to your kids," Cignetti said to begin the news conference after sharing a postgame embrace with his family. "They’re hurting because their old man got his a-- kicked."

The emptiness of it all transported Cignetti back to a lowly moment from 2011, during his first season as a collegiate head coach, when he allowed a similarly painful defeat to hover over his program, much to the detriment of everyone involved. Then in charge at IUP — that’s Indiana University of Pennsylvania for anyone unfamiliar with Division II football — Cignetti wallowed in the wake of a 20-6 loss to Slippery Rock in which the Crimson Hawks' quarterbacks combined to throw four interceptions. It gnawed at him for days. 

"I just couldn’t let it go," Cignetti said when retelling the story at Big Ten Media Days last month. "And it hurt us the next couple of weeks, too, you know? You can’t let this one [against Notre Dame] hurt you. It’s over, you file the lessons