While miraculously guiding Indiana to a spot in the College Football Playoff last season, Curt Cignetti established himself as one of the more colorful characters in the sport, a swaggering Yinzer who was never shy to share his feelings or hide his bravado.
This week at Big Ten media days in Las Vegas, he directed that unfiltered gaze at the SEC.
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While addressing why the Hoosiers had canceled a home-and-home series with Virginia, Cignetti took a shot at the non-conference scheduling model many SEC teams employ and noted that his program was simply following that example.
“12 of the 16 SEC teams play three G5 (Group of Five) or an FCS game,” Cignetti said. “Twelve of those teams play 36 games – 29 G5 games and seven FCS games, and have one less conference game. We figured we’d just adopt SEC scheduling philosophy. Some people don’t like it. I’m more focused in on those nine conference games.”
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Indiana made the inaugural 12-team playoff last season behind a gaudy 11-1 record, but did so against a relatively weak schedule. Of its 11 victories, none came against teams that finished the regular season with more than seven wins. While some of that could be tied to certain Big Ten teams on its schedule, like Michigan, being worse than expected, its three non-conference opponents — Florida International, Western Illinois and Charlotte — went a combined 13-23. None of those programs are from one of college football’s power conferences.
The Hoosiers had been set to play against Louisville, which went 9-4 in 2024, but the final two games of a three-game series against the Cardinals were canceled in 2023, before Cignetti arrived at Indiana. Then-coach Tom Allen cited Big Ten expansion as a reason for the move. The game against Louisville in 2024 was replaced with a matchup against Western Illinois, an FCS program that Indiana thumped 77-3.
The home-and-home series with Virginia had been signed and announced in 2021 before being canceled earlier this month.
This season, the Hoosiers will play Old Dominion, Kennesaw State and Indiana State in the non-conference portion of their schedule. Old Dominion went 5-7 last season, Kennesaw State went 2-10 in its first season at the FCS level and Indiana State, an FCS program, went 4-8.
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Indiana’s scheduling approach has drawn criticism, including from Barry Odom, the first-year head coach at archrival Purdue.
“I could take the approach of one of the other schools in the state, cancel games and do some of those things, but the schedule is what it is,” Odom said in an interview earlier this month with 107.5 FM in Indianapolis.
Unlike the Big Ten, which employs a nine-game conference schedule, the SEC has just eight conference games, giving its members more flexibility to beef up their non-conference schedules or use them to pad their records.
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This season, three of the SEC’s 16 teams — Alabama, Florida and South Carolina — have two non-conference games against Power Four programs while 15 teams have one game against an FCS foe (Texas is the only one that doesn’t.). The most common non-conference scheduling format in the league is the one Cignetti referenced, with 11 of the 16 programs having two games against FBS opponents outside the Power Four, one game against a Power Four foe and one game against an FCS team.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cignetti: Indiana football adopted ‘SEC scheduling philosophy’
