Winning the national championship might have made things difficult for Indiana this year. The Hoosiers finished the season by beating Miami 27-21 for the first national title in program history. Now Curt Cignetti has to reignite that hunger months after a title. Urban Meyer does not think that will be easy.
Before Indiana opens its title defense against North Texas, Meyer looked back at his own teams and another championship story to explain why Cignetti has such a difficult job ahead.
“I still remember it back. The year after is always really difficult,” Urban Meyer said on September 5, as per The Herald Times’ Michael Niziloek. “Those 2006 and 2007 were tough. The team was different, the staff was different. 2008 was very similar; we had the whole team back, but it was just different. And then 2014, we had the majority of the team back as well. It was much better, but it’s still different.”
He recalled visiting Joe Maddon after the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series. Maddon, Meyer said, was already thinking about how hard it would be to repeat. Meyer has seen the same thing in college football. Even when the roster looked familiar, the next season never felt quite the same.
“So Coach Cignetti’s going to deal with something that’s really uncharted waters for everybody in that team locker room, university,” Meyer said per Niziolek’s X post. “How do you handle a team that just won the national title?”
Cignetti arrived in Bloomington before the 2024 season and immediately changed the program. Indiana went 11-2 in his first season, then somehow followed that with a perfect 16-0 campaign. A year ago, Indiana was chasing teams. This time, Indiana is the team everybody wants to knock off.
That pressure starts with Saturday’s opener against North Texas, but it will not disappear after Week 1. Indiana is ranked No. 6 entering the season and has already been pushed into the national championship conversation because of what happened last year. The roster has changed, too.
Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza is gone. Indiana also lost several players to the NFL. Josh Hoover now takes over at quarterback after transferring from TCU. He brings 36 career games, but replacing Mendoza still leaves Indiana with a different offense and a different personality. There is one thing Meyer believes gives Cignetti a real advantage.
“I think the one thing he’s got going is continuity in staff,” Meyer said.
Mike Shanahan remains the offensive coordinator. Bryant Haines remains in charge of the defense. Both played major roles in Indiana’s championship season, and Cignetti specifically praised the work they did on both sides of the ball.
Cignetti signed an eight-year extension this year that runs through 2033 and pays him about $13.2 million a year on average. Indiana made that kind of commitment because it saw the 2025 season as the beginning of a bigger run. That is what Cignetti has to prove now.
Cignetti knows it. Before the North Texas game, he talked about playing to a standard from the first snap through the final one. He does not want his team living off what happened last season. Meyer is warning that making that happen may be harder than it sounds. Indiana has already done the unbelievable part.
Now Cignetti has to prove it was not a one-season wonder.