Greg McElroy delivers grade on Curt Cignetti's first year at Indiana

Greg McElroy gave an obvious grade for the job done during the debut season of Indiana’s Curt Cignetti.

On ‘Always College Football’ last week, McElroy said Cignetti had aced his first year in Bloomington.

“Year-one grade? It’s an A+,” McElroy determined.

That’s an easy rating considering where Cignetti took the Hoosiers to in 2024. Still, that work started back when he was hired following the season prior when Cignetti, who only had head coaching experience at a much smaller level, put together a roster, which also didn’t have as much power experience, that exceeded all expectations of them.

“Well, he’s been at a lot of places but can he do it at this level? We’ve seen him do it at James Madison. We’ve seen him do it in the FCS. We saw him do it at IUP and at Elon. But can he do it, can he really do it in the Big Ten? That’s a huge step up, right,” McElroy wondered. “Well, not only did he do it but he passed every test with flying colors. He was universally respected when he was hired but there was a real question as to whether or not he’d be able to make that leap and he did so in the first year with tremendous success.

“He did lose a lot of guys in the portal. That was something that I think might’ve been planned by the staff – ‘Hey, it’s fine. We can lose those guys. That’s alright. We can lose those guys’. Because, guess what? Kind of like what Deion said the year before, I’m bringing my own luggage and it’s Louis. Well, that’s exactly what Curt Cignetti did with this roster. He brought a bunch of guys with him from James Madison. He brought in 30 guys in the transfer portal, several of which had multiple years of college experience and high, highly productive players…For the most part, he took Group of Five players that could produce and then they were able to elevate and knock off what was a relatively manageable Big Ten schedule. You got to give a lot of credit where credit is due.”

From there, you can look up the kind of success that Cignetti had once again but this time at IU. They had their best season ever with a record of 11-2 overall, and posted that in a dominant way with an average margin of victory of 25.7 points, in going on to make the College Football Playoff.

“When they hired Curt Cignetti, everyone knows the line – ‘I win. Just Google me'” McElroy said. “That was great and it was, it was a fun thing to point to over the course of the season, especially as they just continued to win and win and win.

“Year one? 11-2 record. Amazing. To bring in that many impact transfers? There was really hardly any hiccups whatsoever. They outscored their opponents 537-203. That was third-best in the country. The only two teams that were better? Ohio State and Notre Dame. Those two teams were competing for the national championship. That was their first-ever ten-win season. They went 11-1. Their first-ever College Football Playoff appearance – that’s obvious considering the best season they ever had was nine wins. They had six teams that had won eight games in a year. That was about the best they’d ever had, right, including 2019, which wasn’t that far ago. So, to take them from a team that, at best, could get to eight, maybe nine to now elevate them to eleven in his first year is pretty remarkable.”

Cignetti was one of the only debut coaches to get to double-digit wins and was the only true first-year head coach to take his team to the CFP. That certainly made that grade a clear one as he now goes into the second season of his tenure at Indiana.

“I think that a lot of people should feel pretty confident about the direction that this program is going to continue to head under Curt Cignetti’s leadership,” McElroy said.