Indiana’s historic 2025 season ended with its first-ever national title thanks to stars like Mikail Kamara. He is among the many former transfers that head coach Curt Cignetti gathered over the past two years to orchestrate his Hollywood-esque turnover of the Hoosiers program. Now, Kamara wants Indiana to replicate the success of college football juggernaut Alabama, specifically the kind that came when Nick Saban ran the show.

“Hopefully we can turn this into Bama. Old Bama,” Kamara told the press after his Pro Day performance.

If he’d said this two years ago, he would’ve found himself catching fire for those comments. Now, Indiana is looking like the Alabama of Nick Saban’s early years, having just gotten a grip on the program. Alabama will never be what it was in the Nick Saban era, no matter who runs it now. That’s why, unless DeBoer is able to get the Tide back into a championship-winning roll, not many will want their program to be like the ‘New Bama.’

Saban orchestrated one of the fastest turnarounds in program history, moving from a disappointing debut to a perfect regular season in year two. Since then, Alabama was pretty much undefeatable. In the two years that DeBoer led the charge, the Tide has only managed to reach those 9-4 and 11-4 finishes by scraping by in the tough games. Fans thought Indiana would also take a similar route in 2025. But Curt Cignetti shut down all those skeptical thoughts by charging through the season, like Saban used to do with Alabama.

Cignetti comes from the Saban coaching tree, having coached and recruited for Alabama. So it’s understandable why Indiana is so successful. Kamara’s statement comes from the fact that Indiana’s coaching strategy might have some elements of the Saban playbook.

“I probably think about it every day, to be quite honest with you,” Cignetti said of his experience at Alabama. “Because it had such an impact on my growth and development. “I think, philosophically, the program that we run here is probably a lot more the same than different from Alabama’s. So, there is probably not a day that goes by that I don’t draw from those experiences.”

Cignetti is now 27-2 in his two years at Bloomington, and the former Alabama coach was 28-8 in his first three years at Tuscaloosa. No wonder Mikail Kamara thought Indiana had a shot at being the next Alabama in college football. And because of that success, Kamara is being projected as a Day 3 pick in the 2026 draft. He joins a host of star IU players in the draft, like D’Angelo Ponds and college football’s superstar quarterback, Fernando Mendoza.

Even Nick Saban is hopeful about Cignetti being able to continue building Indiana into something great.

What Nick Saban said about Curt Cignetti’s Indiana after winning the National Championship.

Now that Indiana has won its maiden National Championship, Cignetti’s journey has actually become tougher. It is never easy to defend this crown. Apart from Saban at Alabama and Kirby Smart at Georgia, no coach has been able to consecutively win the Natty in this millennium. But when it comes to Cignetti, the veteran head coach is confident that this success will stay at Bloomington for some time. But it will be a challenge.

“I do think it’s sustainable,” Saban said on The Pat McAfee Show. “But I also think there’s a lot of risk involved when you have that much change every year on your roster,” Saban said. “I was always able to be in a position where you could develop players and you knew what was coming.”

Cignetti proved Saban wrong when the latter thought it was “crazy” of him to leave the Alabama staff to coach at IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania). Just like that, he proved everyone wrong by winning a championship loaded with transfers like Mikail Kamara. Cignetti is using this formula this season as well, relying on transfers to make up for the losses.

At defensive end, particularly, Cignetti’s got Kansas State transfers Tobi Osunsanmi and Chiddi Obiazor. The former was the 5th-best DE in the portal, even though he had a short 2025 season due to injury. Osunsanmi had already racked up four sacks in six games.

“Coach Cig and the rest of the staff is really great at developing players,” Kamara also said at the Pro Day presser. He’s been in the system long enough to know that players have a true shot at developing into something great, just like Alabama players did when they signed up to play for Saban. We’ll have to wait and watch if Cignetti really does pull yet another impossible, by creating a superpower out of Indiana football.