ESPN’s Bill Connelly: IU football’s Curt Cignetti ‘has to be No. 1’ among college football coaches, GMs

One of the most prominent college football voices was effusive in his praise of IU football coach Curt Cignetti ahead of the 2026 season.

Bill Connelly of ESPN.com, who created the SP+ system and is one of the leading voices in analytics in the sport, discussed Cignetti during a recent appearance on the Bet the Process podcast.

Specifically, Connelly was asked where Cignetti currently ranks in the sport when considering both the coaching and GM aspects of running a program.

Cignetti has separated himself from the field, according to Connelly.

“I mean, he has to be number one right now,” Connelly said. “The job he did at James Madison, like the fact that they jumped up to FBS and immediately they had one of the best group of five programs in the country. I saw Brian Fremeau posted something about the outliers, the teams we miss on pre-season projections. And it was something like three of the four biggest positive outliers in his collection were Cignetti teams. So he’s just dynamite. And it really seems like … he’s dynamite in a boring way.

“I kept thinking they were doing like really unique things tactically or something like that and they’re not. It’s just, they identify talent better than anybody else. They develop it. They teach what they need out of positions better than anybody else. And they prepare for games better than anybody else. So that has to be far and away number one.”

Indiana is ranked No. 5 in this year’s SP+ preseason rankings behind Ohio State, Oregon, Notre Dame and Georgia.

Connelly, however, believes that the transfer portal class the Hoosiers brought in for this fall is better than last season’s haul.

“This year’s transfer class is more proven than last year’s was,” he said. “Josh Hoover’s thrown for 9,000-something yards in his career. He takes over for (Fernando) Mendoza. Mendoza was solid at Cal, but he was up and down and we didn’t know what was about to come our way.

“And Turbo Richard, the new running back, averaged 5.2 yards per carry at Boston College on a horrific Boston College offense last year. Well, now he’s running behind one of the best lines in the country. So they’re absolutely going to have a chance, especially if they really are continuing to do the best job of development and deploying their guys in the right way. They’re going to have a chance to be at worst a top-five team again.”

The Hoosiers, who finished last season 16-0 and won their first national championship, won’t begin the 2026 season as the favorite despite all of the returning talent and transfer portal additions.

Indiana is ranked No. 6 in the Associated Press and coaches’ top 25 polls released earlier this month.

Connelly believes some of that stems from skeptics who still think the Hoosiers can’t maintain their current level of success.

“I think it’s just, it’s purely, surely this can’t happen again, right?” Connelly said. “Like there’s just still this kind of Indiana effect. And there has been enough turnover. Ohio State returns Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith. And they were number one in SP + for most of last season until Indiana really, really caught fire at the end.

“So, I mean, Ohio State being number one makes sense to me, but I do think, especially when it comes to poll votes, like it’d be a lot easier to just say, ‘okay, well, until they lose, we don’t know that they’re ever going to lose again, so let’s ride it with Indiana a little bit longer.”

Indiana kicks off the 2026 season next Saturday against North Texas at Memorial Stadium at 12 p.m. ET on FOX.

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