LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB+WAVE) — Curt Cignetti has spent eight months telling Indiana football to forget about winning the national championship.
On Monday, he finally reached the point where he can find out whether anybody listened.
Training camp is over. The championship celebrations are over. The commercials have been filmed. The preseason rankings have been published. The trophy is safely in the case.
Saturday, somebody will keep score.
“What's done is done,” Cignetti said. “This is a new football team. We have a chance to be pretty good. We got to do it.”
For all the attention Indiana has received since completing a 16-0 season and winning the first national championship in program history, Cignetti has spent most of the offseason trying to make sure none of it matters.
That's easier to say in February. It's easier to preach during winter conditioning or spring practice or one of those long August afternoons when everybody is tired of hitting the same people.
Game week is different.
North Texas comes to Bloomington on Saturday. Memorial Stadium is sold out for the entire season. Indiana will run onto the field as the defending national champion, ranked No. 6 in the country, with expectations that would have sounded preposterous around here not very long ago.
And Cignetti wants to see what he's got.
“I believe you learn about your team every week,” he said. “Every time you go out there and play a game you learn a lot about your team.”
That's really the intriguing part of Indiana's opener. The Hoosiers know what they accomplished last season. They don't yet know exactly what they are this season. Cignetti thinks he knows.
“I think we have a chance to be pretty good,” he said.
Pretty good. The Cignetti grading curve is a tough one. But there is a reason for his restraint. Last year's opener provided a pretty good lesson in why coaches don't put much stock in August predictions.
Indiana beat Old Dominion. That's the important part. Cignetti, however, can still recite everything he didn't like about it.
Old Dominion ripped off a 75-yard touchdown on its first offensive play. Indiana's first touchdown came on a 90-yard punt return. The Hoosiers didn't score an offensive touchdown until 3:36 remained in the second quarter.
They got inside the Old Dominion 10-yard line six times and came away with 20 points. Cignetti remembered all of it Monday.
“We won the game, which is what we wanted to get done,” he said. “Thinking there's a lot of work to get done.”
There was. They got it done. That's the trick now: understanding that the finished product everybody remembers from last season wasn't the team that walked onto the field for the opener.
So Cignetti isn't asking this Indiana team to look like the national champions Saturday. He's asking it to start becoming whatever it's going to be.
“I want us to play to a standard play in, play out, from the first play to the last play,” he said. “I want to feel good about our performance walking off the field.”
North Texas should be capable of making Indiana work for that feeling.
The Mean Green won 12 games last season before changing coaches. Neal Brown takes over after his stint at West Virginia, and Cignetti estimated North Texas added roughly 50 transfers among about 70 new players.
That has made preparation unusual. Indiana has studied Baylor tape for clues to the North Texas offense and West Virginia tape for clues to the defense.
“It is different now,” Cignetti said. “Have never really played the game quite like this one where there's just so many new faces, players to coaches.”
One face, however, will be quite familiar. Former Indiana quarterback Tayven Jackson returns to Memorial Stadium with North Texas.
Jackson played at Indiana under Tom Allen in 2024 before transferring to UCF for the 2025 season. Cignetti offered a favorable scouting report Monday.
“He's very talented,” Cignetti said. “He's got a live arm. He can run. He's a good athlete. … He's a good player.”
There are other things Cignetti wants to learn Saturday.
He believes his offensive line “has a chance to be pretty good,” with veteran Bray Lynch set to start at center. He likes his secondary but wishes he had a little more safety depth. He said Indiana emerged from camp relatively healthy, with Gibbs the only player he identified as questionable for the opener.
And kicker Nico Radicic?
“Money in the bank,” Cignetti said.
Even Indiana's fans received their assignment.
“Let's be loud and proud,” Cignetti said. “Let's give them something to be loud about. It's worth two touchdowns in my mind, no question about it.”
The championship changed the way everybody else sees Indiana. Cignetti's challenge is making sure it hasn't changed the way Indiana sees itself.
For eight months, he's been telling his players that last season is over. Saturday, he finally gets to see if they believe him.
“Now we're going to find out,” Cignetti said. “This is when it really counts.”
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