Indiana Is Evolving Under Curt Cignetti — And Other Programs Should Be Worried

Curt Cignetti 2.0 is incoming.

The rebuild at James Madison is all but complete, and No. 5 Indiana is already preparing for what comes next. The caliber of talent Cignetti continues to bring to Bloomington through the transfer portal is evidence of that. But another upgrade could make the Hoosiers even more dangerous.

I still marvel at the reality that Indiana has become a football powerhouse in just two years’ time. It felt improbable for one of the sport's worst historical programs to vault to the front of the field, ahead of proud programs like Ohio State. And Cignetti’s Hoosiers have done that with prejudice and a core group of players who’d spent just a couple of years playing FBS football.

In two seasons at the FBS level, Cignetti went 19-4, dominating the Sun Belt. Then he arrived in Bloomington, famously declaring "Google me" at Big Ten Media Days in 2024. He won 11 games in his first season with a core of former James Madison players and has since reeled off a 22-game winning streak, adding a Heisman Trophy and a CFP national championship to Indiana’s trophy cabinet. Thirteen players followed Cignetti from James Madison to Indiana.

This is where the magic seems to come from for Cignetti.

He possesses scary-good talent evaluation and an ability to retain players he and coordinators Mike Shanahan (offensive) and Bryant Haines (defensive) developed. In 2024, 13 Indiana players played at JMU in 2023. 

But now, in 2026, that advantage is gone.

Heading into Saturday’s game against the Buckeyes, only one former JMU player is still on the roster: defensive lineman Tyrique Tucker. This isn’t an accident. Cignetti and his staff planned for this.

"My first day on the job, we got 10 starters in the transfer portal and half the defense," Cignetti told me last year. "A lot of them were G5 guys. They were all high-character guys that had been productive over two and three years — consistent production. 

"I really felt in my heart like, you know, we'd flip the roster by the end of the [transfer portal] period."

As we know, that initial roster flip became the corps of Cignetti's national title team in 2025. Now, the Hoosiers' head coach is adding another layer to the program's recruiting that is significant: potential.

In the past, Cignetti’s roster acquisitions revealed a type: good players on bad teams. He wanted veterans who had played a lot of snaps and were productive on the field. One of his 2025 acquisitions out of the portal — defensive lineman Stephen Daley — played the first three years of his college career at Kent State. The Golden Flashes went 6-30, including an 0-12 season, but Daley notched 99 tackles and 14.5 tackles for loss. Most importantly, he had experience playing FBS ball. 

Now, Cignetti is expanding that formula. With his 2027 recruiting class, he's betting on upside in a way he hasn't before, landing a commitment from Monshun Sales, the No. 1-ranked wide receiver in the class.

At 6-foot-5 and 195 pounds, Sales is the first five-star prospect ever to commit to Indiana. He’s also the first player IU has landed through high school recruiting who projects as a first-round pick in the NFL Draft. He’s the kind of athlete you build a receiving corps around: powerful enough to run through contact, explosive enough to separate with or without the ball, and gifted enough in the air to make 50-50 balls feel more like 80-20 opportunities.

Put another way: he’s the kind of player who normally picks Ohio State.

But he didn’t, even though the Buckeyes offered him. He plays at Lawrenceville North High School in Indianaplous, which means Notre Dame had a chance to secure his commitment as well. Ultimately, Sales made a sound business decision in committing to the reigning national champions.

Cignetti is now in uncharted territory. For the first time, he can afford to pay seven figures for a wide receiver, recruit players for their potential and trust that Indiana has the infrastructure to turn that potential into production. And he doesn’t have to force it. Indiana has just 17 commits in its 2027 high school recruiting class so far — a manageable number for a program built primarily through the transfer portal.

The more players like Sales that Cignetti lands, the closer Indiana gets to building the kind of roster depth that defined national championship teams long before NIL changed the sport. If he can pull it off, the Hoosiers could start recruiting with the same force as the program sitting atop the college football world heading into Week 7: Georgia. And that should terrify the rest of the Big Ten.

The gap is still significant. Georgia’s 2026 roster features 13 five-stars and 69 four-stars, according to the 247Sports Talent Composite. Indiana, by comparison, has just 16 four-stars. But imagine what happens if Cignetti starts closing that gap — if the Hoosiers can pair their transfer portal prowess with a steady pipeline of elite high school talent.

That’s how Indiana builds a program capable of winning multiple national championships.