Big Picture: How Indiana Became a Football School Against All Logic

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — There was an evening last fall when Indiana safeties coach Ola Adams made an in-person appearance on a local radio show. At that point in the season, which was the program’s first under head coach Curt Cignetti, the Hoosiers were still unbeaten, still floating through an unthinkable fever dream for the losingest program in Division I history. Back then, nobody knew that Indiana’s inaugural trip to the College Football Playoff was little more than a precursor to the mechanized domination on display this season, an undefeated marauding that could culminate with the No. 1 team's coronation in the national title game on Monday night.

When Adams finished the interview, an older woman in the audience gently grabbed his arm and pulled him off to the side. She was, in Adams’ best guess, well into her 70s or older. And she wanted to thank him for what she described as "the most fun I’ve ever had" across a lifetime of rooting for the Hoosiers. 

"That was my moment of being like, wow, this is pretty special, you know?" Adams told me. "Let me take a step back and kind of enjoy this a little bit. You also realize that you’re not just playing for yourself. You’re not just playing for the team. But there’s people that are supporting you, [and] we’re making their lives better as well. It’s pretty cool, you know, to kind of see the support of the town. I feel like everybody is a little bit happier and everybody has something to look forward to because, in the past, they’ve just felt like they never had that." 

Certainly not in a football sense, which makes the giddiness of a woman whose Hoosier fandom has spanned at least three men’s college basketball national championships, if not more, fairly instructive. What Cignetti and the Hoosiers are doing amid this mind-twisting, landscape-altering run was presumed impossible at a hoops-first utopia: They’ve erased decade upon decade of gridiron indifference and replaced it with a hysteria funneled from the hardwood of Assembly Hall, where legendary coach Bob Knight once prowled. 

Given the financials that are now affixed to Cignetti’s regime — both in terms of the significant resources committed to him by Indiana and the eye-bulging sums his on-field success has generated for the university — it’s now increasingly difficult to view Indiana as anything other than a football school. 

Let’s start with the money. After Penn State fired head coach James Franklin in mid-October, at which point rumors about Cignetti as a potential replacement began to swirl, Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson needed less than a week to unveil a sparkling new contract that spans eight years and includes an average annual salary of $11.6 million. A clause in Cignetti’s deal also necessitates a "good faith market review" following the national championship game, given that the Hoosiers advanced to at least the CFP semifinals. Indiana is now required to tweak or amend his contract and ensure that he remains among the sport’s three highest-paid coaches. Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Ohio State’s Ryan Day were already earning more than Cignetti, and new LSU head coach Lane Kiffin joined them by signing a seven-year deal worth $13 million annually last month. 

With staff continuity playing an integral role in Cignetti’s success across head-coaching tenures at IUP, Elon, James Madison and Indiana, he prioritized rewarding coordinators Bryant Haines (defense) and Mike Shanahan (offense) with hefty raises, too. The former will now earn $3 million for the 2026 season, effectively aligning him with the highest-paid defensive coordinators in the country, while the latter will earn $2.4 million in the first year of his deal. Their annual compensation rates, which include additional raises from the aforementioned figures, now exceed the salary of every Indiana football head coach until Cignetti’s predecessor, Tom Allen, was bumped to $3.77 million in 2020. That was also the first time an Indiana football coach commanded a salary exceeding that of the men’s basketball coach, according to the USA Today coaches salary database.

"It's night and day," Haines said when asked about the program’s evolution since his lone season as a Hoosiers’ graduate assistant in 2012. "And I don’t say that lightly. It didn’t mean anything to be an Indiana football player [when I was] a GA here. It didn't mean anything to be a GA. It didn't mean anything to be a coach. It was a program that was still trying to get out of the mud."

Because Haines’ prior experience at Indiana came during a stretch when basketball was still king — even though the Hoosiers haven’t reached a Final Four since 2002 — he’s among a handful of Indiana staffers uniquely positioned to describe the program’s renaissance by drawing on experience from hoops-first institutions. Adams, the safeties coach, spent seven seasons at Villanova from 2015-21, a stretch that included two basketball national championships under former coach Jay Wright. Cornerbacks coach Rod Ojong was a graduate assistant at North Carolina when former coach Roy Williams won it all in 2017. And quarterbacks coach Chandler Whitmer was a player at UConn in 2014 when both the men’s and women’s basketball programs captured national titles in the same season, a feat they also accomplished 10 years earlier.

Each of them described varying levels of apathy, or at least disinterest, from fan bases that were focused largely on other sports — all while trying "to shift it," as Ojong told me, no matter how unlikely that possibility seemed. 

"Villanova won a national championship in football," Adams told me. "But it’s FCS football. So no matter how good you got there, it just wasn’t equal to what basketball could attain. If you win a national championship [at Indiana] it’s equal playing, because this is the biggest, highest level of football. So it’s just been amazing to kind of come here and kind of transform the place and kind of redefine the culture."

"Just the excitement that [winning basketball] brought to campus and obviously to the fan base was great," Whitmer told me. "And then, as far as translating that to Indiana, I know historically that’s what it’s been here. But my time was just this year, so all I know it as is a football school. Just having that experience at UConn, yeah, it kind of shows you that. But it’s kind of cool to have it be the football team now to play in a national championship."

Legions of Indiana faithful seem to agree. How many times during this year’s CFP have the Hoosiers benefitted from veritable home atmospheres at what were supposed to be neutral sites because Indiana fans invaded one stadium after another? How many times have broadcasters, analysts and writers mentioned that Indiana has the nation’s largest living alumni base at more than 805,000 worldwide, all but inviting them to donate funds? How much air time has been gobbled up by new Indiana super donor Mark Cuban — the former principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a proud Indiana alum — during on-field celebrations each time the Hoosiers win the biggest game in program history?

All of it has translated to record highs for Indiana in areas like ticket revenue, fundraising, applicants and student enrollment, according to the "Huddle Up" newsletter written by Joe Pompliano. The true economic impact of what Cignetti has accomplished in less than two full seasons is staggering, radiating from the athletic department to the university at large, with another huge surge likely to come if the Hoosiers defeat No. 10 Miami at Hard Rock Stadium on Monday night.

"I always saw the value in this place," Haines told me. "I knew that it could take off. I remember telling Coach Cignetti when he first pulled me in his office and [the move to Indiana] was about to go down, I said, ‘That place can take off.’ I truly believed that. To see that it actually did has been unbelievable."

Basketball might define the institution's past, but that sport is no longer the gateway to Indiana's future. The Hoosiers have entered a stratosphere that Knight could never imagine and one that only modern college football can provide. 

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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