CRAWFORD | No warm fuzzies: Cignetti wants Indiana sharp for championship game | Sports

MIAMI, Fla. (WDRB) – Curt Cignetti is not here for sentiment. He didn’t bring any. Didn’t pack it. Didn’t allow it through TSA.

The coach who has led Indiana to Monday’s College Football Playoff championship game against Miami knows he’s coaching a feel-good story. On Sunday, he sent a clear message to his team: put away your feelings.

“You don’t go to war with warm milk and cookies,” he said, and somewhere Vince Lombardi nodded and Nick Saban scribbled it on a cocktail napkin.

He’s right, of course. You go with blitz pickups and blocking sleds and a quarterback who looks like he could organize the United Nations if he weren’t too busy torching Big Ten defenses.

Cignetti has spent the better part of 40 years becoming an overnight success. He’s the guy who gets mistaken for the offensive line coach but walks out with the trophy. He speaks in the clipped rhythms of a man who’s been through too many fourth quarters and too few ribbon-cuttings.

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He has Indiana playing for a national title. And really, that’s the only resume line he’ll ever need. But not the only one he wants.

Still, he’d rather talk about tackle-for-loss stats than fairy tales.

“There's been a lot of pro Indiana hype, a lot of rat poison out there,” Cignetti said, appropriating a phrase for praise popularized by his old boss, Nick Saban.

He said he saw a social media post about his team hugging after its final full-scale practice on Saturday, noting how much the players love each other.

“It is a close team,” Cignetti said. “I've witnessed quite a bit of sentimentalism throughout the week from some of our seniors who we've been with quite a long time.”

Then the coach reared up.

“I think it's time to sharpen the saw now, throw those warm fuzzies out the door, that sentimentalism,” he said. “It's time to go play a game against a great opponent. We've got to have a sharp edge going into this game. You don't go to war with warm milk and cookies.”

Holly Rowe. Rat poison. Warm milk. You don’t so much interview Cignetti as step into a twisted Cracker Barrel of coaching philosophy.

But it works.

He’s the son of a coach, born in a town where everybody worked in coal, steel or football. He was a ball boy for Bobby Bowden. He learned from his father, from cancer, from Nick Saban before he was “the” Nick Saban.

He has built Indiana into the nation’s last unbeaten team while saying things they're ready to embroider on throw pillows in the Hoosier state.

Cignetti's quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, is a Heisman winner who reads defenses like bedtime stories. His locker room is tighter than TSA security on a holiday weekend. And his answer, when asked what a national title would mean, was so Indiana it should’ve come with a pork tenderloin sandwich:

“It would mean we’re the national champion.”

That’s it. That’s the whole answer. No flags waved. No violins. No pregame poem about “man in the arena” stuff.

He’s not trying to be remembered. He’s trying to win.

Cignetti knows what this is. Knows they’re playing Miami, in Miami, in a game for everything. But he doesn’t want nostalgia. He wants a sharp edge.

No hugs. No Hallmark moments. No warm fuzzies. Leave the milk in the fridge.

Just 150 plays of cold, hard football.

And maybe, that gold cone of a championship trophy to go with it.