Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti is no longer the underdog entering the 2026 season. The National Championship-winning coach proved that his Hoosiers were no one-hit wonders. This year, though, the seasoned head coach has to tackle a key problem area to maintain Indiana’s reputation as college football’s next big thing.

“I feel like we probably have more work to do with this group than the first two teams, simply because there’s so many that we don’t have a one-to-three-year relationship with, whereas even the first year there were quite a few we knew very well,” Cignetti said during a press conference on Thursday.

The stars who brought the Natty to Bloomington are all gone. Fernando Mendoza, D’Angelo Ponds Jr., Omar Cooper Jr., Elijah Sarratt, and many more have headed to the draft. Cignetti, just like last year, got to work and brought in yet another top-ranked transfer portal class this year to make up for the losses. However, in the past two years of his being Indiana’s head coach, he was dealing with transfers who followed him from James Madison. These were players he already knew before, like linebacker Aiden Fisher. But this year, Cignetti is meeting a host of those players for the first time.

The Hoosiers have 17 transfers and 19 of their 22 freshmen at spring camp. According to ESPN, only 56% of the team will consist of familiar faces. Last year, Indiana returned with 61% of the previous team. But this group had players like Mendoza, Sarratt, and others, who could easily pull through even if the newcomers failed. This year, almost half the team is new for Curt Cignetti. He has players like transfer quarterback Josh Hoover, who is a veteran. But this is the first time the two will be working with each other.

Defending the National Championship with such a roster is going to be so much harder for the coach. But Cignetti has separated them from the old players, even preventing them from participating in the National Championship celebrations. These guys will be suiting up at practice hungry to know what their new teammates felt like when they brought that trophy home.

“All we’re going to try to do is squeeze as much juice out of this group as we can this spring and take them as far as we can,” Cignetti added in his plans for these new players. One of them was also quickly put in his place, thanks to the coach’s no-nonsense attitude.

Cignetti starts first day of spring practice with “wake-up” call

The first day of spring practice was a revelation for incoming transfer Nick Marsh, who had a tricky encounter with Curt Cignetti. The wide receiver arrived at the spring camp session with gold cleats on, instead of the normal red, white, or black. Right then and there, Cignetti gave him a piece of his mind.

“He learned what getting your a— ripped is all about,” Cignetti said. “I don’t know if that happened to him very often at Michigan State. That was a wake-up call.”

Marsh is getting to play at one of the most interesting college football programs out there, but he will also have to go through the grind of being a Hoosier. Former JMU player and now high-school football coach, Percy Agyei-Obese, said that Cignetti benched him in a game after he fumbled the ball, and he wasn’t back on until the fourth quarter. He also didn’t get to play much in the next game. But these harsh moves only ended up fueling a fire in players, who then work hard to draw appreciation from the coaches. Hopefully, Marsh does the same as well.

Until this year, Cignetti was known as the coach who was guaranteed to turn struggling programs around. Now that he’s done that at Indiana, he is now faced with ensuring the continuity of success at such a program. But whether or not he’ll be able to do that with a roster that he’s not very familiar with, is the question.