LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Indiana fans went to Huber's Orchard and Winery looking for one more taste of last season. They went for the stories. The memories. The autographs. The reminders.
The pace car. The national title. The Rose Bowl. The long-awaited arrival of Indiana football at the grown-ups' table.
There were more than 1,100 people out in the country in Starlight, Ind., Wednesday night, gathered around a program that spent most of its life wandering college football's wilderness before suddenly roaring past everybody at 177 miles per hour.
And there sat Curt Cignetti, dryly funny, sharply organized, mildly uncomfortable with all of it.
Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford
Not angry. Just restless.
The most revealing moment of the night didn't come when Cignetti talked about winning a national championship. It came when he talked about talking.
Outside before the event, reporters kept asking him about the state of college athletics. Revenue sharing, salary structures, the spiraling economics of the sport. And for a moment, he answered honestly.
"The market is pretty expensive. It's scary," Cignetti said, then volunteered, "I think relative to your question, players should get paid. But something is going to have to be done in the next 12 to 24 months or universities aren't going to be able to handle this. College football won't exist the way we're going right now."
That is not a small statement from the reigning national championship coach.
But then, almost instantly, he pulled back into himself.
"You can't win really, to be honest with you," he said. "So I will stay in my lane."
And later, once he got inside and took the stage beside longtime radio voice Don Fischer, Cignetti admitted the comment was still bothering him.
"Well, you know, I was getting peppered with all these questions about the state of college athletics outside," he said. "I don't usually like turn right into that language. I got suckered into one, and wasn't very pleased with myself maintaining my focus."
That may have been the most Curt Cignetti quote Curt Cignetti has ever delivered.
Not because he lacks opinions.
Quite the opposite.
He clearly thinks the sport is veering toward something unstable and unsustainable. You don't say college football may cease to exist "the way we're going right now" unless the concern runs deep.
But Cignetti also seems to view public discourse itself as a potential waste of competitive energy.
Control the controllables, as he says, and when it comes to the college football landscape, "For me to comment on this or that – I've got no control over this process."
To him, there are only so many hours in the day. Only so much focus before the edge dulls.
And edges, around Cignetti, appear sacred.
This is a man who talks about football the way military commanders talk about supply lines.
Efficiency. Standards. Discipline. Repetition. Control.
Even celebration seems to make him itchy.
"Well, golly, it's too bad we've gotta play again this year," he said, in his biggest laugh line. "We can glory forever and ever. Unfortunately, that's not the way to do it. The clock keeps on ticking. What have you done for me lately? Or as Lou Holtz used to say, 'What are you going to do now? What you did yesterday seemed important. You haven't gotten much done today.'"
At one point Wednesday night, Fischer asked him how Indiana avoids complacency after reaching the mountaintop last season.
Cignetti barely paused.
"If you're fat and happy and basking in something we did about three months ago, you're in the wrong place," he said.
That wasn't coachspeak. That was philosophy.
Because here's what makes Cignetti fascinating right now: even after winning it all, he still talks like a man trying to build something fragile before it disappears.
Most championship coaches eventually become ambassadors. Historians of their own greatness. Public storytellers. Faces of the sport.
Cignetti still sounds more like a foreman checking bolts on a bridge.
While the fans at Huber's arrived wanting to relive last season, their coach was already somewhere else entirely. They did, though, get his recap of his pace car run in the Indianapolis 500.
"It was the grandest spectacle, the most unbelievable experience," said Cignetti, who noted he hit 177 mph in a run the day before the race. ". . . I've become a racing fan. I woke up the next morning and couldn't wait to get back in the car again."
Indiana's probably glad to hear it.
Their coach is still on the gas.
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