Curt Cignetti didn’t try to build Indiana football the old way, and that choice changed everything.
When Indiana hired Cignetti in November 2023, the program was fresh off a three-win season and still carrying the label of the losingest team in college football history. It was a basketball school in a basketball state, and the football program had spent years living in the shadows. Cignetti arrived and immediately went after the transfer portal instead of waiting on high school recruits to develop.
That first portal class was a statement. Indiana landed 31 commits, including 13 from James Madison. Cornerback D’Angelo Ponds, defensive linemen Tyrique Tucker and Mikail Kamara, wide receiver Elijah Sarratt and linebacker Aiden Fisher were among the former Dukes who became the backbone of the haul, which ranked 29th nationally, per 247 sports.
The result was immediate. Indiana rolled to an 11-1 regular season and earned a College Football Playoff berth before heading to South Bend to face Notre Dame.
The Fighting Irish won 27-17, but the Hoosiers still finished with the best season in school history. The momentum carried into the next offseason, when Cignetti added 23 more commits along with multiple returning starters.
That group included quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who went on to win the Heisman Trophy, as well as defensive lineman Stephen Daley, offensive lineman Pat Coogan and running back Roman Hemby. Those additions helped power Indiana to its first football national championship and an undefeated season.
Indiana’s rise stands in sharp contrast to Clemson’s path under Dabo Swinney. Swinney has been openly critical of the transfer portal and has said culture matters more. Clemson mostly stuck to high school recruiting, even as the rest of the sport changed around it.
For a while, the Tigers could afford that stance. From 2015 to 2020, Clemson was basically a permanent fixture in the College Football Playoff conversation, reaching four national championship games in five years and winning two. Deshaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence, Travis Etienne Jr. and Dexter Lawrence were among the elite players who came through the program.
But the refusal to fully embrace the portal has left Clemson chasing the sport instead of shaping it. The Tigers made the College Football Playoff in 2024, but they finished with four losses, then six the following year. After a 7-6 season in 2025, Swinney brought in 11 transfers before the 2026 season, the most in program history.
Indiana isn’t the only program that has cashed in on the portal. Southern Methodist had just one 10-win season from 1984 to 2018, but over the past three seasons the Mustangs have had two 10-plus win seasons and a College Football Playoff berth in 2024, helped by 85 transfers.
Still, the portal doesn’t flatten everything. Money matters.
Players from smaller schools are often pulled away by bigger programs with more NIL cash to offer, and that leaves those smaller teams trying to replace the talent they just developed. North Texas is a clear example: after winning 12 games and reaching the American Athletic Conference championship game last year, the Mean Green watched their coach leave for Oklahoma State University, along with star quarterback Drew Mestemaker and 16 others.
North Texas had to start over, and Indiana handled them easily in the opener, winning 52-16. That result also showed that the balance created by the portal does not automatically reach every corner of the sport.
Indiana, once known more for empty seats at Memorial Stadium than for football success, now has a program expecting to chase championships every year in front of sold-out crowds. The old model of depending only on high school recruiting is gone. The portal has opened the door to parity, but in the Power Four, the offseason has also turned into a financial arms race.
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