Indiana
Scott Dolson wanted Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti to know ‘how much we’re committed’
What Curt Cignetti’s new contract with Indiana football means
As his name came up around coaching vacancies, the Hoosiers coach said he was tired of the outside noise. A new deal with IU will help silence that.
BLOOMINGTON — Indiana is a football school now. Adjust accordingly.
Of the many things Curt Cignetti’s new eight-year, $93 million contract signaled when it broke abruptly Thursday afternoon, understand that first. And recognize it as most important.
This place that has been for so long synonymous with basketball — so smitten with the game it learned to love during the cold, dark winter between harvest and planting — is now all in on football at a level there’s really no going back from.
“I couldn’t be more proud to be a Hoosier, and I plan on retiring as a Hoosier,” Cignetti said in a short video posted to IU football’s Twitter account Thursday. “The way that this state has embraced us and our success in football has meant more to me than anything else. So, I just wanted to get on camera and let you know that Curt Cignetti is gonna work daily to make Indiana the best it can be.”
His words firmed up what his department’s dollars, his donors’ investment and his team’s performances have all illustrated across the last 22 months:
Indiana has been completely recoded. Football comes first here, and football is flying.
Cignetti’s new contract — negotiated in the shadow of a coaching carousel expected to be among the busiest and most robust in recent memory — likely ensures he is going nowhere.
It reflects years of steady, stubborn investment in football from an athletic department and a university assured for a generation the sport was a hopeless enterprise in this part of the world. Thanks to both Cignetti’s success, and the sport’s reimagined conventions around roster planning, construction and development, that old wisdom now looks foolish.
Saturday’s win at Oregon, arguably the most important and impressive in program history, stands as testament to Cignetti’s ability.
But it also reflects a decade and a half spent shoring up the foundations of a football program athletic director Scott Dolson — like Fred Glass before him — believed was capable of this. All it needed was to hand the right tools to the right coach.
The tools came first. Indiana spent more than $100 million on facilities, increased coaching salaries more than ninefold, invested media rights revenues by the sack full and, yes, even paid a big-boy buyout along the way.
The belief was always that this moment could and would arrive. That if IU just didn’t quit, eventually it would find a man to meet both the moment and the money. It is impossible now to suggest Cignetti doesn’t fit that description.
Thursday’s news signaled more than that, though. It also reflected an urgency both Dolson and university President Pam Whitten feel to ensure Indiana’s agency in football keeps the Hoosiers in the picture as college athletics shrinks its top table.
Both Dolson and Whitten know football is the currency that keeps not just a program or a department but perhaps an entire university relevant in the modern landscape.
IU acted this quickly, in the wake of one big job (Penn State) already opening, because it knew it needed to keep what it has.
Per an IndyStar source, Cignetti’s buyout in his new contract rises from $10 million (which it would have been after Dec. 1) to $15 million. And there are likely to be further sweetened incentives included, like an expanded staffing pool, and possibly promises of even greater revenue-sharing and name, image and likeness investment into a roster that stayed together impressively from Cignetti’s first year in Bloomington to his second.
In fans’ minds, Cignetti’s own words — “I plan on retiring a Hoosier” — probably offered the greatest comfort.
Actions, though, speak loudest. Cignetti’s willingness to sign a third contract in less than two seasons, and to further entrench himself within the program he’s turned into a national title contender, says more than his statement ever could.
“I think what’s super important is that President Whitten and I both wanted coach Cig to know how much we’re committed to him, and committed to football,” Dolson told IndyStar on Thursday. “That was really what led to the sense of urgency (around this contract). And then we also didn’t really want any distractions for the team.”
Now, that team pushes forward unfettered, into the back half of a season that by all rights should end in a Big Ten championship game, and then the College Football Playoff.
Realities that seemed like fantasy even two years ago have become commonplace now in Bloomington. They have been met with an enthusiasm that rivals anything this place has shown for hoops in the last 30 years.
This isn’t a basketball school playing football anymore. The conventions have been overturned.
Indiana is a football school now, and on current evidence, that’s not changing any time soon.
Want more Hoosiers coverage? Sign up for IndyStar’s Hoosiers newsletter. Listen to Mind Your Banners, our IU Athletics-centric podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the latest on IndyStar TV: Hoosiers.
WHITELAND, Ind. (WISH) — “The Zone” featured highlights from eight high school boys basketball games from across central Indiana on Friday.
Watch highlights of Beech Grove at Whiteland above.
Final Score: Whiteland 89 Beech Grove 61
“The Zone” airs each Friday at 11:08 p.m. Click here to watch ‘The Zone’ for basketball highlights on February 27, 2026.
The Indiana Pacers are hoping to retain their 2026 first-round pick, which is protected 1-4 and 10-30. If the selection lands between 5 and 9, it conveys to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the Ivica Zubac–Bennedict Mathurin trade.
At the top of the 2026 NBA Draft class, three names are consistently labeled as generational talents: AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Darryn Peterson.
Indiana would welcome any of the three. The bigger question is whether that feeling would be mutual.
On a recent episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons was joined by draft analysts Tate Frazier and J. Kyle Mann. During the discussion, Mann shared an interesting note about Peterson.
“I’ve gotten the impression from talking to people close to Darryn,” Mann said, “that Darryn is more likely to say, I’m interested in being the full on brain of this team. I don’t really want to play with another superstar, I want to be the center of the universe.”
J. Kyle Mann on The Bill Simmons Podcast
If that perception holds weight, it creates an intriguing dynamic.
The Pacers were one game away from an NBA championship last season and already feature two established stars in Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam. Indiana is not a franchise searching for a singular identity, it already has one.
To be clear, Mann’s comments reflect conversations and impressions, not a public statement from Peterson himself. Still, the fit is worth examining. Indiana’s backcourt rotation already includes Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith and T.J. McConnell. If Peterson were the pick, the Pacers would find ways to get him on the floor. He is that talented. But Indiana could not offer him an immediate “face of the franchise” role the way a Brooklyn, Sacramento or Washington might.
Mann also offered insight into how Dybantsa may view a situation like Indiana’s.
“AJ, people that know them both have told me that AJ is probably more likely to fit in with an Indiana,” Mann said. “Which is interesting because AJ likes to have the ball. Is he willing to be quick off of the ball with Haliburton? I just think that’s an interesting wrinkle in this.”
J. Kyle Mann on The Bill Simmons Podcast
The contrast is fascinating.
Hearing that Dybantsa would fit in more than Peterson is intriguing. Play style wise, I would lean more towards Peterson’s fitting how Indiana likes to play, especially with how Dybantsa has been utilized at BYU.
If we’re talking locker room fit, I think Dybantsa would embody what a Pacer is all about. Comes from a small market. Wants to win and doesn’t need the big city to do it in. He’s confident but won’t let his ego interfere with the success of the team. Just a levelheaded kid with a desire to be great, and would have one of the best playmaking point guards alongside him to help maximize his talent.
These two are the most polarizing and often mentioned names amongst NBA draft circles when looking at the top two in the class. If the comments made by Mann come to be true, the Pacers would be better off drafting the uber talented 6-9 forward, Dybantsa, than drafting a 6-6 elite shooting guard who would rather be “the guy” than a guy.
You can follow me on X @AlexGoldenNBA and listen to my daily podcast, Setting The Pace, wherever you get your podcasts.
HOBART, Ind. (WLS) — A wrong-way crash left one woman dead and two others seriously injured in Northwest Indiana earlier this week, police said.
The mother of the 20-year-old who was killed spoke exclusively with ABC7 Chicago as she is demanding justice.
ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch
Just before 2 a.m. Saturday, the Hobart Fire Department responded to the horrific crash on Interstate 65 involving two vehicles, north of 61st Avenue near Merrillville, Indiana.
Rylee Hanson, 20, was killed in what investigators says was a head-on collision with a wrong-way vehicle in the northbound lanes.
“I had Rylee when I was 20 and she made me who I am,” mother Karen Hanson said. “She made me want to be a better person and she made me strive, to reach goals, so I could set examples for kids… She was half of my life. I don’t know how to be me without her.”
Her family says Rylee was a ray of light who graduated from Kankakee Valley High School in Demotte, Indiana where she earned her EMT certification from Ivy Tech Community College. She was headed to criminology studies at Indiana University.
Her parents are appalled nobody has been charged in the crash.
“We want to see change with how drinking is handled,” Karen Hanson said. “There’s gotta be a better way for how people drink or get served or more punishment for impaired drivers out on the road where they’re not getting so many chances.”
Troopers said they believed that the driver of the car going the wrong way was impaired at the time.
“We are going to make her as proud as she made us,” Karen Hanson said. “Because she did… there are no words to tell you about the pain. It is indescribable.”
The investigation is still ongoing. Anyone with footage of the crash, or of the vehicles prior to the crash, has been asked to contact Indiana State Police.
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