Curt Cignetti, Bob Knight, and the Echo of Greatness in Bloomington
MIAMI - If Indiana finishes the job Monday night and hoists the national championship trophy, the Hoosiers will have done something no school has ever pulled off: own the most recent undefeated national titles in both college football and basketball.
And here’s the kicker - the last time it happened on the hardwood? Exactly 50 years ago.
Bob Knight’s 1976 Indiana team went a perfect 32-0, etching their place in college basketball lore. Now, half a century later, Curt Cignetti has his football team on the doorstep of a similarly historic run.
Cignetti, 64, isn’t just chasing wins. He’s building something that feels eerily familiar in Bloomington - a culture, an edge, a belief that Indiana can compete with the best. And whether he planned it or not, the comparisons to Knight are starting to bubble up.
The two men are wired differently - different sports, different eras - but there’s a shared intensity, a flair for the dramatic, and a deep-rooted connection to Indiana’s identity. Cignetti, for his part, doesn’t shy away from the Knight connection. In fact, he embraces it.
“I was a big Bob Knight fan as a little kid,” Cignetti said during Sunday’s national championship press conference in Miami. “I liked sort of the shenanigans and the faces at the press conferences and throwing the chair across the court. I thought that was pretty cool.”
That admiration goes beyond childhood nostalgia. Cignetti even bought his house from someone who was close friends with Knight. And while he hasn’t been slinging chairs across the field, he’s had his share of headline-making moments since arriving in Bloomington - starting with his now-infamous declaration on the basketball court: “Purdue sucks, but so does Michigan and Ohio State.”
It was bold. It was brash.
And it was very much in the spirit of Knight, who once told a packed Assembly Hall that he wanted to be buried upside down “so my critics can kiss my ass.” Knight was a master of the mic before social media ever existed, delivering press conference moments that still rack up views decades later - from wielding a bullwhip as a motivational tool to rubbing a glass like a crystal ball to “predict” a player’s performance.
Cignetti’s early days at Indiana carried a similar energy. He’s admitted that some of his louder moments were calculated - an effort to jolt a dormant fan base, to inject some swagger into a program that hadn’t seen much of it.
But in year two, the tone has shifted. The antics have cooled. The focus is sharper.
Still, the echoes of Knight linger. Cignetti says people close to Knight have told him he reminds them of the Hall of Fame coach. That’s high praise in a state where Knight’s legacy is more than just banners - it’s an identity.
Whether Cignetti wants to lean into the comparison or not, it’s hard to ignore the symmetry. A half-century after Knight’s perfect season, Indiana football is on the brink of its own. And if Cignetti can deliver the school’s first-ever football national title, the parallel becomes more than poetic - it becomes historic.
Cignetti, for now, is keeping his focus on the task at hand.
“It really has no effect on what’s going to take place here at 7:50 tomorrow night,” he said. “But it was 50 years ago, and if we’re able to climb that mountain, it’ll be a unique coincidence.”
Coincidence or not, Indiana fans know what’s at stake. A win Monday night doesn’t just make history - it ties together two eras of greatness, two coaches who dared to believe in Bloomington, and two teams that refused to lose.