Colin Cowherd thinks Curt Cignetti story has been ‘overplayed’ as Indiana falls in CFP rankings

Colin Cowherd devoted a segment of Wednesday’s “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” on FS1 to the Indiana Hoosiers, a day after the College Football Playoff selection committee dropped them from No. 4 to No. 9 during their bye week. Indiana hosts the USC Trojans on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET, and Curt Cignetti has yet to say who will start at quarterback.

“I will say, and I say this as somebody who works for a company that has their arms around the Big Ten, I think the Curt Cignetti story is awesome. I think it’s been a little overplayed. I thought he got about 90% of the credit for their national championship, and I think Mendoza deserved at least half of it. Under Cignetti, the offense is a BB gun without Mendoza. They schedule a weak out of conference, but his record is otherworldly. It’s 35 and 3, and he took over a bad program. He’s a really, really good coach, but he’s not Saban. Saban, both sides of the ball. Players became irrelevant at Alabama. Offense, defense, you couldn’t separate them. They were great at both. That’s not what Indiana is. Indiana, he sets a very high floor foundationally and culturally. Mendoza was the ceiling.” Cowherd said.

Cignetti coached receivers and ran recruiting on Saban’s staff at the Alabama Crimson Tide from 2007 to 2010, so Cowherd measured him against the man he once worked for.

The 35-3 mark covers an 11-2 first season, last year’s 16-0 title run and this season’s 8-1 start, with the North Texas Mean Green, Howard Bison and Western Kentucky Hilltoppers making up this year’s nonconference schedule.

“I’ll give you an example of this. If you look at Indiana against ranked opponents under Curt Cignetti, when Mendoza played, they averaged 38 a game and win by three touchdowns. Without Mendoza, including this year, they’re 0-3 and they score 15 points. They’re over double the offense with Fernando Mendoza, now a Raider, than they are without it. Cignetti is super conservative. Nick Saban was not offensively. Cignetti’s really conservative. He’s not the recruiter of Saban. I think he’s a very, very good coach, but he got an incredible amount of the love on that 16-0 team that could have easily lost five games if Mendoza wasn’t the quarterback.” Cowherd said.

“Under Curt Cignetti the offense is a BB gun without Fernando Mendoza… He’s a really, really good coach. But he’s not Saban.”

@colincowherd on Cignetti & Indiana’s post-Mendoza era https://t.co/VWnBMnhVgd

— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) November 11, 2026

Mendoza went 6-0 against AP top-10 opponents last season, and Indiana scored 227 points in those six games, just under 38 per game. Indiana scored 47 points combined in its three losses under Cignetti: 38-15 at the Ohio State Buckeyes and 27-17 at the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the playoff’s first round in 2024, then 19-15 at home against Ohio State last month. Last season also produced one-score wins over the Iowa Hawkeyes, Penn State Nittany Lions, Ohio State and Miami Hurricanes, which, of course, were the close calls behind Cowherd’s five-loss point.

Does Cowherd’s ranked-opponent split prove the Mendoza point?

Two of the three losses came in 2024, Cignetti’s first season after taking over in November 2023, with Ohio Bobcats transfer Kurtis Rourke at quarterback. The third came in the game where Josh Hoover hurt his right shoulder. The “without Mendoza” column holds a first-year rebuild and an injured quarterback, which makes it as much a measure of roster age and health as of one player.

Hoover, the TCU Horned Frogs transfer brought in to replace Mendoza, went his first seven games without an interception and threw four touchdown passes in both the North Texas win and the 47-15 rout of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. He left the Ohio State game briefly after the injury and came back. Across the two games since, he has completed 16 of 37 passes, and Cignetti pulled him at halftime against the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Oct. 31 after a hit on an interception return. Grant Wilson, a seventh-year backup, went 9 of 17 for 156 yards in relief and threw the winning touchdown in overtime.

“Our defense the last four or five games has been really solid. Offensively, we’re not producing like we had the previous two years. Our consistency is not there right now,” Cignetti said on his weekly radio show during the bye week.

Indiana has not reached 21 points in regulation in any of its last four games, and it won three of them while allowing 58 points in total.

“I’m not saying Mendoza is going to be Peyton Manning. Nor am I saying Cignetti is not an excellent coach. I think he’s a really good coach, but I would not be shocked if they lost to USC. I really wouldn’t. They’re both off a bye. I wouldn’t be shocked. I think USC’s got much more firepower offensively. Oh, Indiana moved down five spots while they were on a bye? Is that what people were talking about? I don’t spend a lot of time on where these are ranked. I think Georgia, Notre Dame, Miami are the only three teams that can win a national championship.” Cowherd said.

USC sits No. 18 in the committee’s rankings at 7-2. A healthy Hoover against that team would give Cowherd’s ceiling argument its fairest test, and a stalled offense with him at full strength would hand the FS1 host his best evidence yet.

Cignetti has kept the starting job open since Hoover’s exit against Minnesota.

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